Home›Church, Sacraments and Authority›TraditionBrowse ByTraditionThis page groups doctrines by the religion whose teaching they carry. Wikipedia notes that the word dogmatism "is often used to refer to matters related to religion," describing a strong belief its adherents hold without room for debate. Browsing by tradition lets a visitor read every doctrine from one religion together.FactsLearn MoreTraditionSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsDirectoryCategoryWell-attestedDoctrines 1Learn MoreThirty Five Doctrines of Who Leads and What the Rites Require This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.Church, Sacraments and Authority gathers thirty five doctrines about who may lead a religious body, what its rites require and mean, and how each question has split communities that agree on almost everything else. Authority is the largest thread. Apostolic succession grounds Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican ordination in an unbroken chain from the apostles, while congregational, presbyterian and episcopal polity name three different answers to where binding authority sits, and papal primacy and infallibility state Rome's own most contested claim within that debate. Orthodoxy answers differently again, ranking Constantinople first in honor rather than jurisdiction, a settlement tested by the 2019 Tomos granting Ukraine its own autocephaly. Twelver, Ismaili and Zaydi Shia Islam each locate authority in the imamate through a different line from Ali, and the Latter-day Saint Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood, once restricted by race until 1978, names a third model again, delegated authority rather than inherited office. The Baha'i Faith and Christian Science abolish the office outright, one refusing any priesthood, the other ordaining a book as pastor. Sacraments raise their own disputes: believer's baptism against infant baptism, the real presence in the eucharist as the sharpest Western division of all, and open against closed communion over what shared bread announces. Indulgence and simony name two ways the medieval church monetized grace and office. Worship rules close the group, the regulative principle and a cappella practice insisting on positive scriptural warrant, against the Wesleyan and Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilaterals, which test doctrine by scripture, tradition, reason and historic order together.TraditionFilter Results61 entriesAdherents TodayAllAttendance at the same year's Memorial exceeded 21 million (1)Estimates of Oman's Ibadi Muslim population range from about 35 to 45 percent of the country's roughly 5 million people (1.76 to 2.25 million), with no official government count to settle the range; Ibadism remains the largest single Islamic school in Oman, concentrated in rural and interior regions. (1)Independent estimates put the combined worldwide membership of the six Oriental Orthodox churches, Coptic, Ethiopian Tewahedo, Eritrean Tewahedo, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac Orthodox and Malankara Orthodox Syrian, at about 72 million as of 2020, up from a 2018 estimate of more than 50 million; the six churches' own combined claimed total runs considerably higher, at approximately 87 million, though that figure carries no fixed reference year. (1)Pew Research Center's 2017 study of global Orthodox Christianity estimates the worldwide Orthodox population at nearly 260 million as of 2010, roughly double the 124 million recorded in 1910, even as Orthodoxy's share of the world's Christians fell from 20 percent to 12 percent over the century as other Christian traditions grew faster. (1)Recorded membership counts all baptised or blessed and not removed from the rolls, and exceeds self-identification in national censuses (1)The Holy See's own count, compiled from diocesan returns of baptisms; it is not a survey of self-identification and exceeds census self-identification in several countries (1)The largest yearly meetings are in Kenya, Burundi and Bolivia rather than in Britain or North America (1)The Pew Research Center's December 2011 Global Christianity report estimated 800 million Protestants worldwide in 2010 (37 percent of the 2.18 billion people identifying as Christian), compiled from a country-by-country analysis of roughly 2,400 censuses, demographic surveys and population registers. (1)The wider Anabaptist-Mennonite family, including bodies that are not MWC members, is counted at about 2.13 million (1)The World Christian Database put worldwide Anglican Communion membership at about 90.8 million in 2015, nearly double its 1970 total of 47.4 million, with growth concentrated in Africa even as the Episcopal Church in the United States and other North American provinces declined over the same period. (1)United States-only religion-census tallies have recorded far fewer, in the low hundreds of thousands, reflecting the convention's international membership as much as any difference in counting method (1)Adherents Today MaximumAll225,776 (1)278,000 (1)380,000 (1)1,000,000 (1)1,500,000 (3)2,000,000 (1)2,130,000 (1)2,250,000 (1)3,500,000 (2)17,887,212 (1)21,000,000 (1)22,785,195 (1)95,000,000 (1)100,000,000 (1)110,000,000 (1)260,000,000 (1)1,406,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll225,776 (1)278,000 (1)380,000 (1)1,000,000 (1)1,200,000 (1)1,450,000 (1)1,500,000 (3)1,700,000 (1)1,760,000 (1)2,500,000 (1)3,500,000 (1)9,043,460 (1)17,887,212 (1)22,785,195 (1)53,871,526 (1)78,000,000 (1)80,000,000 (1)220,000,000 (1)1,406,000,000 (1)Also Known AsAllAlevi (1)Alevis (1)AME Church (1)Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria (1)Eastern Orthodox Church (1)Ibadi (1)Ismail (1)Moravia (1)Nizari (1)Pentecostals (1)Roman Catholic (1)Roman Catholic Church (1)Ban or Official WatchlistAllChurch construction and repair by Egypt's Coptic Orthodox community was long subject to a distinct, more restrictive permitting regime than mosque construction, requiring presidential approval for each building under a nineteenth century Ottoman era decree; a 2016 unified law eased, though did not eliminate, the disparity. (1)Russia's Supreme Court ruled on 20 April 2017 that the Jehovah's Witnesses' Administrative Center and its local religious organizations be liquidated and banned as extremist, under Russia's 2002 law On Countering Extremist Activity, following a Justice Ministry lawsuit and an inspection alleging the Center continued funding branches already closed for extremism; the ruling affected more than 100,000 Jehovah's Witnesses adherents in Russia. (1)Bankruptcy FilingsAll1 (1)28 (1)BaptismAllBeliever's baptism by immersion, on a personal confession of faith. Infants are not baptised. (2)Believer's baptism on confession of faith. The historic mode is pouring rather than immersion, and infants are not baptised. (1)Basis of the Education Facility CountAllThe Body's Own Published Statistics (2)Basis of the Health Facility CountAllThe Body's Own Published Statistics (1)Basis of the Humanitarian Aid FigureAllThe Body's Own Published Statistics (2)Basis of the Membership FigureAllChurch-Reported Rolls (32)Independent Survey (14)National Census (9)Scholarly or Demographic Estimate (20)Basis of the Wealth FigureAllAudited Annual Report (5)Court-Documented Inventory (1)Government Disclosure (1)Journalistic or Scholarly Estimate (6)Regulator Filing (4)The Body's Own Published Statistics (6)Calendar SystemAllJulian (Old Calendar) (2)Church FamilyAllAdventist (1)Anabaptist (2)Anglican (4)Baptist (3)Eastern Orthodox (9)Latter Day Saint (2)Lutheran (3)Methodist (6)Moravian (1)Oriental Orthodox (4)Pentecostal (1)Quaker (1)Reformed (3)Restorationist (4)Roman Catholic (1)Confessional StandardAllThe Belgic Confession of 1561, one of the Three Forms of Unity (1)The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland (1)The Canons of the Synod of Dort of 1619, one of the Three Forms of Unity and the work of a synod that sat under this church's own authority (1)The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, adopted at Lambeth in 1888, which is a basis for reunion rather than a confession and binds no province to more than its four articles (1)The Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, one of the Three Forms of Unity (1)The Preamble and Declaration of 1870, which stands at the head of the Constitution of the Church of Ireland (1)The remaining writings of the Book of Concord, held as further valid interpretations of the faith (1)The Small Catechism of Luther (1)The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, received and approved in the Preamble and Declaration of 1870 and kept in the church's constitution (1)The Unaltered Augsburg Confession of 1530 (1)Contested or Appropriated Modern UseAllDisagreements over the ordination of women and over gay clergy and same sex unions have led some provinces to declare impaired or broken communion with others (1)The English name is also used for the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk in South Africa, a different church with a different history (1)Whether Kharijite names a precise historical sect or a broader modern label (1)Date of SeparationAll2022 (1)Date of Separation End YearAll451 (2)680 (1)750 (1)765 (1)1204 (2)1527 (1)1555 (2)1560 (1)1561 (1)1566 (1)1571 (1)1600 (1)1612 (1)1653 (1)1662 (1)1795 (1)1830 (1)1850 (1)1863 (1)1879 (1)1914 (1)1925 (1)1931 (1)1966 (1)1967 (1)Date of Separation Start YearAll451 (3)632 (1)657 (1)765 (1)1054 (3)1346 (1)1448 (1)1457 (1)1500 (1)1517 (1)1521 (1)1525 (1)1534 (1)1536 (2)1560 (1)1599 (1)1609 (1)1652 (1)1784 (1)1787 (1)1796 (1)1804 (1)1811 (1)1830 (1)1833 (1)1844 (2)1858 (1)1870 (1)1879 (1)1885 (1)1906 (2)1915 (1)1917 (1)1961 (1)1962 (1)1966 (1)1993 (1)Defining Doctrinal PositionAllA Goddess and a God as a divine pair (2)A living, present imam (1)Achintya bhedabheda: inconceivable oneness and difference (1)Affirms the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (1)An inner (batin) meaning of scripture and law alongside the outward (2)Belief may be concealed where disclosure would bring harm (taqiyya) (4)Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) (5)Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) (14)Christ's Second Appearing already fulfilled in the movement's own founding (1)In the Imam's absence a qualified jurist holds his political authority (1)In the Imam's absence the jurist guides and judges but does not rule (1)Leadership by the community's election of the most qualified, without descent (1)Leadership by the community's election of the most qualified, without descent (1)Miaphysite: one incarnate nature of the Word, divine and human united (2)Miaphysite: one incarnate nature of the Word, divine and human united (2)Non-trinitarian: the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity is not held (3)Rejects the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father (1)Rejects the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father (8)Requires no subscription to a creed (1)Restorationist: holds the apostolic church to have been lost and restored (5)Succession by divine designation in the Prophet's family (3)The godhead confessed as both Father and Mother (1)The Imams are protected from sin and from error (ismah) (3)The Qur'an is God's created speech (1)Trinitarian: one God in three persons (22)Trinitarian: one God in three persons (9)Vishnu as the supreme reality (1)Doctrinal Position DetailAllChrist's Second Appearing is held to have already occurred in the society's own founding, and celibacy is required of every member. (1)Held that the caliphate should pass to the most pious and capable Muslim regardless of tribe or lineage, against Sunni and Shia claims tied to Quraysh or Ali's descendants; taught that a Muslim who commits a grave sin ceases to be a Muslim (1)Primacy of honour: the patriarch convenes and speaks for the communion but does not govern the other autocephalous churches (1)The godhead is confessed as both father and mother, which is the ground of the society's paired government of men and women. (1)The shut-door doctrine, the early conviction that the door of salvation had closed for those who had heard and rejected the 1844 message, was abandoned by the wider sabbatarian Adventist movement by the early 1850s and forms no part of Seventh-day Adventist teaching today. The church's own historical materials describe the doctrine plainly rather than avoid it: Ellen G. White, who along with James White and Joseph Bates held the belief in its early form, maintained in her own later writing that she was never shown in vision that salvation was closed to the world, and that a series of visions beginning in late 1848 redirected the movement toward the belief it has held since, that the 1844 change concerned Christ's ministry in the heavenly sanctuary rather than the world's opportunity for salvation. (1)Doctrinal StandardsAllThe Apostles Creed and the Twenty-Five Articles of Religion, which the church names as the basic foundation of its beliefs. (1)The Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church and the Confession of Faith of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, named as constitutive standards. A restrictive rule forbids the governing body to revoke, alter or change them or to establish new standards contrary to them. (1)The Articles of Religion, derived from the Church of England and abridged by John Wesley for Methodists in America in 1784. (1)The Free Methodist Articles of Religion, which state entire sanctification as an article in its own right rather than leaving it to Wesley's sermons. (1)The Methodist doctrinal standards, with the Nicene and the Apostles Creeds. (1)Documented Accused CountAll1 (2)5 (1)19 (1)21 (1)237 (1)800 (1)1006 (1)1670 (1)1880 (1)2900 (1)4392 (1)Education Facility Count As OfAll2023-12-31 (1)2026-03-29 (1)Episcopal TenureAllBishops are elected by delegate vote and hold the office for life until the age of seventy-four. The General Conference that elects them meets every four years with equal numbers of clergy and lay delegates. (1)Bishops are elected by the General Conference and assigned to episcopal districts, and retire at the General Conference nearest their seventy-fifth birthday. The Council of Bishops holds general oversight of the church between General Conferences. (1)Bishops are elected by the General Conference, which is the supreme administrative body of the church, and govern collectively as a Board of Bishops between its sessions. (1)Bishops serve a fixed term of six years and may be elected to one further term. The 2024 convening General Conference settled the term, and life tenure was deliberately not carried over from the church it separated from. (1)Led by three bishops in the United States. Lay delegates sit in equal number with the clergy in the councils of the church, a check on episcopal power that the founders were pressing for when they were expelled from the Methodist Episcopal Church, and which was built in at the founding rather than conceded later. (1)Financial Disclosure RegimeAllAnglicanism is expressed through the Anglican Communion, a worldwide fellowship of independent, self-governing member churches, each with its own primate, synod and finances, in communion with the See of Canterbury rather than subject to it. The small Anglican Communion Office in London coordinates meetings and communication but holds no consolidated treasury for the tradition; each member church funds and discloses its own finances separately. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Anglicanism as a whole to disclose. (1)As a church, the Convention is exempt from mandatory IRS Form 990 filing in the United States; the filings that exist were voluntary or incidental, and no current annual-report practice was located. (1)Baptists hold the local autonomy of the individual congregation as a defining principle of their tradition: each Baptist church governs itself, calls its own ministers and manages its own property and finances independently, with no bishop, council or central body holding authority over another congregation's affairs. Baptist conventions and unions, the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention USA among them, are voluntary associations of self-governing churches rather than a single denominational treasury for Baptists as a whole. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for the Baptist tradition as a whole to disclose. (1)Bhaktivedanta Manor is a registered charity (number 1157877) audited annually, filing accounts with the Charity Commission for England and Wales and, as a company limited by guarantee (number 08300433), with Companies House; the wider ISKCON movement is not centrally audited and each temple trust files separately. (1)Community of Christ is organized as a church and, like other churches, is not required to file the IRS Form 990 information return most large US nonprofits must file. Figures on its finances reach the public only through what the church itself chooses to publish, such as this 2024 FAQ on a specific transaction, rather than through a routine regulatory filing. (1)Eastern Orthodoxy is a communion of autocephalous and autonomous national churches, each fully self-governing in its own internal affairs including its own finances. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople holds a position of honorary primacy, first among equals, rather than central executive or financial authority over the others. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole to disclose; a figure exists, if at all, only at the level of an individual autocephalous church. (1)Germany imposes no financial disclosure requirement on Jehovah's Witnesses comparable to the UK Charity Commission's or Canada's T3010 regime; its public-law corporation status carries no attached reporting duty, and the organization's German headquarters has declined a direct media request to state its annual donation income. (1)Lutheranism is not a single church but a worldwide family of independent national and regional church bodies descended from the sixteenth century Reformation associated with Martin Luther. Many, though not all, belong to the Lutheran World Federation, a communion of self-governing member churches rather than a single denomination with one treasury; others, including the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and other confessional bodies, hold no membership in it at all. Each Lutheran church body funds and discloses its own finances separately. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Lutheranism as a whole to disclose. (1)Mennonite Church USAs Executive Board voluntarily publishes its own annual independent audit. Mennonite World Conference and the wider global Mennonite communion have no central treasury binding member bodies; each national or regional conference, and each congregation within it, holds its own finances. (1)Methodism is not a single church but a worldwide family of independent denominations, the United Methodist Church, the Global Methodist Church, the Methodist Church in Great Britain and many national and regional Methodist churches among them, tracing their origin to John Wesley's eighteenth century revival movement within the Church of England. The World Methodist Council coordinates fellowship among them but holds no consolidated treasury for the tradition; each Methodist denomination funds and discloses its own finances separately. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Methodism as a whole to disclose. (1)No central body exists to disclose anything. Each congregation is legally and financially autonomous, with many separately claiming 501(c)(3) or church tax exemption on their own. (1)Oriental Orthodoxy is a communion of independent, self-governing national and regional churches, the Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac and Malankara traditions among them, each with its own leadership, canon law and finances, joined by shared Christology and mutual recognition rather than by any single administrative or financial authority over the whole communion. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Oriental Orthodoxy as a whole to disclose. (1)Protestantism is not a single church but the broad family, numbering many thousands of independent denominations worldwide, that trace their origin to the sixteenth century Reformation's rejection of a single central ecclesiastical authority. It has no worldwide governing body, no central clergy and no denominational treasury; each Protestant denomination, and often each individual congregation, holds and discloses its own finances separately. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Protestantism as a whole to disclose. (1)Separately from any wealth the Church itself holds, the Greek state has funded clergy pay directly since 1833; under a November 2018 agreement between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Archbishop Ieronymos, around 10,000 clergy came off the formal civil service payroll while the state continues to fund their salaries through an annual subsidy of around 200 million euros. This state subsidy is government expenditure on clergy pay, not Church-held wealth, and should not be read as evidence of the Church's own asset base. (1)The African Methodist Episcopal Church does not publish a consolidated denomination-wide financial statement; what reached the public record here came through litigation. A multidistrict class-action settlement announced 30 August 2024 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee found that a church officer had stolen retirement funds and concealed the diversion of others into unauthorized, risky investments, and began restoring money to about 5,000 affected employees and retirees, with further restoration still subject to court approval. (1)The Christian Science Journal, the Church's own official monthly periodical, has carried a Treasurer's financial report from The Mother Church's Annual Meeting, the source of the figures recorded here. No independently audited financial statement published by the Church to the general public outside that own reporting was located in this pass. (1)The Church Commissioners for England publish an audited annual report and accounts each year under UK charity law. The wider Anglican Communion is an association of 42 self governing national and regional member churches with no single global treasury or consolidated financial disclosure of its own. (1)The church maintains an internal Department of Finance and Connectional Budget Department and a General Secretary-Auditors office that publishes departmental audit reports. (1)The Church of Greece publishes no consolidated public account of its own finances; the extent of its wealth is a politically sensitive, largely taboo subject in Greece, even as the Greek state continues to pay the salaries and pensions of Orthodox clergy. With 130,000 hectares, the Church is Greece's second largest landowner after the state itself. (1)The Church of Greece publishes no unified annual report or consolidated accounts covering the institution as a whole. Its central financial arm, EKYO, discloses its own budget only through statements by its own named officials to the press; each metropolis, monastery and parish maintains and discloses its own finances separately. (1)The Church of Ireland publishes an annual Representative Church Body Report and accounts to its General Synod every year. There is no external regulator requiring this; it is the Church's own longstanding voluntary practice of public reporting. (1)The Church of Sweden publishes an annual report on its own national-level asset management, but the report explicitly states that asset management within its dioceses, parishes and individual congregations falls outside its scope, so no single published figure covers the church's total holdings nationwide. (1)The Church Pension Fund is a tax-exempt public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code, exempt from filing the public Form 990 information return since it qualifies under sections 509(a)(1) and 170(b)(1)(A)(i), though it files a Form 990-T and state equivalents to report unrelated business taxable income from certain alternative investments. Its combined financial statements are nonetheless independently audited and voluntarily published in full each year as part of its own Annual Report. (1)The Coptic Orthodox Church's Endowments Authority publishes its own summary figures for the land and property it manages, but the Church's finances overall are governed internally by the patriarch, the diocesan bishops and lay clerical community councils, and are not subject to independent Egyptian state audit; the Church has resisted oversight by Egypt's state accountability agencies. (1)The Ecumenical Patriarchate publishes no consolidated financial statement or budget of its own. What can be documented instead comes from lay support bodies such as the Archons, who publish their own giving figures on the Patriarchate's behalf. There is no charity-style regulatory disclosure mandate: the Patriarchate is the historic seat of an autocephalous church operating within Turkey, outside any equivalent registry. (1)The Free Methodist Church of North America is recognized by the US Internal Revenue Service as a church and is not required to file the Form 990 return most other tax exempt organizations file. ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer database holds no such filing for it, and no other consolidated public financial statement was located in this pass. (1)The General Conference is a religious organisation exempt from mandatory IRS Form 990 filing in the United States. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer confirms it holds no Form 990 data for the General Conference (EIN 52-0643036, Silver Spring, Maryland). Disclosure is entirely voluntary, made through the General Conferences own annual Treasurers Report to the Annual Council and its Annual Statistical Report. (1)The Roman Catholic Church in the United States publishes no single consolidated balance sheet; each diocese and eparchy reports separately, and the aggregate figure recorded here comes from the USCCB's annual Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People compliance reports, compiled with CARA survey research and StoneBridge Business Partners audit procedures, plus individually reported 2024 settlements. It tracks abuse settlement payouts specifically, not the church's total wealth, property or investment holdings. (1)The Romanian Orthodox Church does not publish one consolidated public financial statement; its revenue mixes direct state subventions, restitution of communist era confiscated property, donations and commercial income, with individual dioceses and monasteries managing their own separate holdings. (1)The Russian Orthodox Church publishes no audited accounts and no consolidated financial statement of any kind. The two independently named estimates recorded here, roughly 7 million US dollars a year from sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin and roughly 150 million US dollars in one year's untaxed commercial profit from an RBC investigative team, diverge so widely from each other precisely because neither is drawn from a disclosed total; the divergence itself is evidence of the opacity rather than a contradiction to resolve. (1)The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, charity number 1077961, and must file annual accounts and returns on the Commission's public register like any registered charity, a public disclosure route most Jehovah's Witnesses branch entities elsewhere do not have; its US parent body, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, is a recognized church under US law and, like the Church of Scientology and Trinity Church Wall Street above, is exempt from filing the IRS Form 990 return. (1)The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Canada is a registered Canadian charity and must file an annual T3010 return with the Canada Revenue Agency, a second national public disclosure route alongside Britain's, though Charity Intelligence Canada's own review finds that filing hard to reconcile with the charity's separate financial statements. The Brooklyn headquarters sell-off, like the Church of Scientology's Clearwater holdings above, is documented mainly through public real estate transaction records and trade press reporting on specific closed sales, not through any routine financial disclosure by the Watchtower Society itself. (1)This figure is the ELCA Foundation's own published total from its 2025 Annual Report, relayed here via a 2 April 2025 Grand Canyon Synod newsletter summary rather than the full annual report document itself, which this pass could not open directly. No independent audit of this specific stewardship-assets figure was located, and no precise as-of date beyond '2025 Annual Report' was given, so no wealth-as-of-date property is recorded. (1)Twelver Shia Islam has no single central church or treasury. Religious and financial authority is distributed among a number of independently recognised senior clerics known as marja al-taqlid, sources of emulation, each maintaining his own network of representatives and his own religious tax receipts and charitable funds, with no consolidated accounting across that institution as a whole. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Twelver Shia Islam as a whole to disclose. (1)UK Charity Commission for England and Wales statutory annual return and accounts, filed by Britain Yearly Meeting (Charity 1127633) as the registered national body. Quaker meetings elsewhere, including the many independently registered local and area meeting charities within Britain itself, file their own separate accounts under the same regime or none at all; there is no worldwide Quaker consolidation. (1)Under section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) of the US Internal Revenue Code, churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches are automatically exempt from filing the annual Form 990 information return that other tax exempt organizations in the United States must file. This exemption, requiring no application, is a large part of why the finances of the largest US religious bodies, including this one, are not publicly itemized the way an ordinary nonprofit's are. (1)Force and Military ServiceAllNonresistance. The believer does not bear the sword, serve in war or sit as a magistrate. (1)Pacifist. The society refused to bear arms and sought exemption from military service. (1)FounderAllA monarchical episcopate at Rome is not documented before the second century (1)A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977). (1)Alex Sanders (1926-1988) and Maxine Sanders (b. 1946). (1)Ann Lee, in whom the society holds Christ's Second Appearing to have occurred. (1)Apostolic foundation is claimed for each of the ancient patriarchates (1)Apostolic foundation is claimed for each of the constituent churches (1)Attributed by the church to the apostle Peter as first bishop of Rome (1)Attributed by the church to the evangelist Mark. (1)Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), and Thomas Campbell (1763-1854) with his son Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) (1)Benjamin Titus Roberts (1823-1893) (1)Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929) and William J. Seymour (1870-1922) (1)Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916) (1)Conrad Grebel (c. 1498-1526), Felix Manz (c. 1498-1527) and George Blaurock (c. 1491-1529). (1)Ellen G. White (1827-1915), with James White and Joseph Bates. (1)Followers of Jan Hus organized under Gregory the Patriarch, drawing on the teaching of Petr Chelcicky; renewed in 1722 under Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) (1)George Fox (1624-1691), with Margaret Fell (1614-1702). (1)Gerald Gardner (1884-1964). (1)Gregory the Illuminator, who converted King Tiridates III (1)Haci Bektas Veli (13th century) is the tradition's central figure (1)Jabir ibn Zayd (d. c. 711); the name derives from Abd Allah ibn Ibad. (1)James Varick (c. 1750-1827) (1)John Calvin (1509-1564), with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger before him. (1)John Knox (c. 1514-1572). (1)John Smyth (c. 1570-1612) and Thomas Helwys (c. 1575-c. 1616). (1)John Wesley (1703-1791), with Charles Wesley (1707-1788) and George Whitefield (1714-1770). (1)Joseph Smith (1805-1844). (1)Joseph Smith III led the 1860 reorganization; the wider movement traces to his father Joseph Smith (1)L. Venchael Booth (1919-2002), who issued the founding call; T. M. Chambers was elected the convention's first president (1)Martin Luther (1483-1546), who did not set out to found a separate church. (1)Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910). (1)Menno Simons (1496-1561). (1)Muhammad ibn Nusayr, a ninth century teacher; the tradition was consolidated in the tenth century by Husayn ibn Hamdan al-Khasibi. (1)No founder in the sense of a separate community (1)No single founder (5)No single founder. (1)No single founder. Constituted in 1789 as an independent province, with Samuel Seabury consecrated its first bishop at Aberdeen in 1784. (1)No single founder. Declared its own independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1833, shortly after the modern Greek kingdom's founding, and was recognised as autocephalous in 1850. (1)No single founder. Emerged from the sixteenth century Reformation as the established church of a country whose great majority remained Roman Catholic. (1)No single founder. Emerged in 657 CE from a group who left Caliph Ali's camp after rejecting his arbitration agreement with Mu'awiya. (1)No single founder. Formed as a communion from 1867 at the first Lambeth Conference, gathering churches descended from the Church of England. (1)No single founder. Formed in 1988 by the merger of three Lutheran bodies. (1)No single founder. Its own record states it is not a single institution and has no governing body, covering the ancient patriarchates, the Church of Cyprus, the Church of Greece and the diaspora archdioceses, each of which already carries its own founder fact where one is dateable. (1)No single founder. Its Reformation proceeded gradually and administratively from the Diet of Vasteras in 1527 to the Uppsala Assembly of 1593, which fixed the Augsburg Confession as its standard. (1)No single founder. Organised from the Synod of Emden in 1571. (1)No single founder. Traces Christianization to the Roman-era population of Dacia. (1)No single founder. Traces its origin to the fourth century Christianization of the Aksumite kingdom, shared with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. (1)No single founder; formed by congregations and clergy separating from the United Methodist Church, the new church launching on 1 May 2022. (1)No single founder; organized by 41 delegates formerly enslaved in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with William H. Miles and Richard H. Vanderhorst consecrated its first bishops (1)No single founder; shares the Restoration Movement's founding figures Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell with the Disciples of Christ, with David Lipscomb (1831-1917) the central figure in its formal separation (1)No single founder; the 1915 split was led on the NBCA side by Richard Henry Boyd (1843-1922), who had built the National Baptist Publishing Board (1)Richard Allen (1760-1831), with Absalom Jones in the 1787 walkout that led to it (1)Saint Nino, credited with converting Queen Nana and King Mirian III (1)Saint Sava, youngest son of Stefan Nemanja, who became the church's first Archbishop (1)Seymour's Azusa Street mission is the movement's decisive centre (1)The division follows the recognition of Ismail ibn Jafar (d. c. 762) as imam (1)The movement was reorganised under Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869-1942) (1)The separation was effected under Henry VIII and the doctrine settled under Elizabeth I (1)The Shia trace their position to the Prophet's designation of Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661) (1)Traditionally founded by the apostle Barnabas, whose evangelisation of the island is the ground its own record gives for its independence from Antioch, affirmed at the Council of Ephesus in 431. (1)Traditionally the Apostle Thomas; externally attested as an organized community by the fourth to sixth centuries (1)Traditionally traced to the Apostle Andrew. (1)Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, who adopted Orthodox Christianity for Kievan Rus in 988 (1)GovernanceAllA federation of autonomous member organisations (5)A living imam whose office passes by descent (1)A single central governing body over the whole movement (5)An imam or caliph elected by the community or its electors (2)Authority in a living teacher and their succession (1)Authority in living jurists whom the laity choose to emulate (1)Authority through a shaykh and an initiatic chain (1)Autonomous covens, authority conferred by initiation (2)Autonomous local bodies under a national umbrella association (2)Business decided by the gathered meeting seeking unity, without clergy (1)Congregational: each congregation self-governing (6)Connexional: congregations bound in a conference with itinerant ministry (6)Delegated representation from congregations up to a general conference (1)Episcopal: governed by bishops (11)No central authority (3)Presbyterian: governed by elders in graded courts (3)Priestly office passing by descent (1)Self-governing churches under patriarchs, deciding in synod (12)Synodal: governed by synods of clergy and lay delegates (4)Universal primacy of a single bishop (1)Health Facility Count As OfAll2023-12-31 (1)Hospitals and Health Facilities OperatedAllAccording to the Fides News Agency's Catholic Church Statistics 2025 dossier, drawn from the Church's own Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae ("Church's Book of Statistics"), the Catholic Church runs 103,951 charity and healthcare centres worldwide as of 31 December 2023. These include 5,377 hospitals and 13,895 dispensaries, chiefly in Africa and the Americas, plus 504 care homes for people with leprosy, 15,566 homes for the elderly, chronically ill or disabled, and 8,593 orphanages. (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllCodified Obligation With Consequences (9)Customary Norm (13)Obligation to Support, No Set Rate (4)Preached Expectation, Not Enforced (9)Humanitarian Aid Figure As OfAll2012-06-30 (1)2025-12-31 (1)Institutional Wealth or FinancesAllA commonly reported figure describes the denominations Connectional Budget Department paying off a refinanced 3.9 million dollar loan tied to its Charlotte, North Carolina headquarters complex by 2021. (1)A February 2023 settlement order from the US Securities and Exchange Commission found that Ensign Peak Advisors and the Church, from 1997 through 2019, failed to disclose the size of the Church's US equity portfolio, using thirteen shell limited liability companies to file separate Forms 13F rather than one consolidated filing; the portfolio had grown to approximately 32 billion US dollars by 2018. Ensign Peak paid a 4 million dollar penalty and the Church a 1 million dollar penalty. (1)About 230.59 million euro in the Church's General Funds total funds at the end of 2023, having fallen by about 18.08 million euro during the year, per the Representative Church Body's own Report 2023 to the General Synod. (1)An investigation by journalists Svetlana Reiter, Anastasia Napalkova and Ivan Golunov, reported by RBC and Meduza, found the Russian Orthodox Church's commercial ventures, including a liturgical goods factory, generated an estimated 5.6 billion rubles (roughly 150 million US dollars) in untaxed profit in 2014 alone. The investigation could not establish a total wealth figure and stated plainly that reliable data on the Church's finances does not exist. (1)At least three federal class-action lawsuits filed by retired African Methodist Episcopal Church pastors alleged that church officials had lost or mismanaged more than 90 million dollars, about 70 percent, of the denomination's pastoral retirement pension fund, which had been valued at about 126 million dollars the previous year. The suits alleged the church's then head of retirement services had sole authority over the fund with little oversight and steered it into undeveloped Florida land, a solar panel promissory note and a since-defunct capital venture. (1)Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), registered charity 1127633 and the central body for Quakers in Britain, reported total income of 12,253,000 pounds sterling against total expenditure of 16,207,000 pounds sterling for the year ended 31 December 2024, in its accounts filed with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. This is the British national body's own accounts, not a worldwide Quaker total; Quaker meetings elsewhere, including the many independently registered local and area meeting charities within Britain itself, file their own separate accounts. (1)Churches of Christ have no central denominational body of any kind above the local congregation, so no consolidated wealth or budget figure exists to report. (1)Community of Christ sold the Kirtland Temple and a group of related historic properties and artifacts in Nauvoo, Illinois, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 192.5 million US dollars, announced 5 March 2024, per the denomination's own account. It states the proceeds will chiefly fund a Temple Endowment and a Worldwide Mission Endowment, projecting roughly 175 million dollars placed into those endowments generating just over 57 million dollars of income between 2025 and 2034. This figure is the proceeds of one specific 2024 divestiture, not a total net worth for the denomination, which this atlas has not found published anywhere; the same account projects the church's separate Worldwide Mission Tithes income declining about 4 percent a year, from 9.8 million dollars in 2025 to 6.5 million dollars in 2035. (1)David Nielsen, a former senior portfolio manager at Ensign Peak Advisors, the Church's centralized investment reserve fund, filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Internal Revenue Service in 2019 estimating that the fund's holdings had grown to more than 100 billion US dollars during his roughly nine years there. This is the whistleblower's own estimate of the fund's total size, not an audited or regulator-confirmed figure. (1)Ensign Peak Advisors' most recent quarterly Form 13F-HR filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, covering the quarter ended March 31, 2026 and filed May 13, 2026, reports a total reportable equity portfolio value of approximately 53.67 billion US dollars across 1,708 holdings; this is the fund's current, ongoing public disclosure, required since the February 2023 SEC settlement ended the fund's prior use of thirteen shell companies to keep its holdings off public 13F filings for more than two decades. (1)International Society For Krishna Consciousness Bhaktivedanta Manor Limited, the UK charity operating ISKCON's Bhaktivedanta Manor temple in Watford, reports total funds (net assets) of 14,836,740 pounds as of 31 December 2024, up from 13,635,087 pounds a year earlier, of which 13,524,093 pounds is unrestricted and 1,312,647 pounds restricted, in its own audited Trustees' Annual Report and Financial Statements. This is one UK temple's own accounts, not a figure for ISKCON worldwide or even for ISKCON in the UK as a whole; the charity's ultimate controlling party, International Society for Krishna Consciousness Limited, files a separate consolidated statement not read for this fact. (1)IRS Form 990 filings for National Baptist Convention of America International Inc, EIN 72-1044367, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, show total revenue of about 1,036,529 dollars, total expenses of about 982,535 dollars and total assets of about 1,339,127 dollars for the fiscal year ending June 2012. (1)Mennonites are a loosely federated tradition with no single consolidated wealth figure. Mennonite Church USAs Executive Board publishes its own annual independent audit, and Mennonite World Conference operates on a triennial Fair Share contribution formula from member national conferences, but MWCs own current Fair Share page states that actual contributions do not reach the unified funding goal, without giving a current dollar total. (1)No consolidated net worth or annual budget for the Patriarchate itself is published anywhere found in this pass. The clearest documented financial figure tied to its upkeep is the roughly 73.97 million US dollars in direct and indirect support the lay Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate report having given the Patriarchate from 2002 through 2025, a measure of external donor giving rather than of wealth the Patriarchate itself holds. (1)No disclosed figure exists for the German branch of Jehovah's Witnesses' finances. Germany's Jehovah's Witnesses have held the legal status of a Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts, a public-law corporation, nationwide since 2017, a status the organization itself has stated it does not use for its associated privileges such as levying church tax, and German media reporting on a ZDF television documentary investigation records that the German headquarters in Selters declined to disclose its annual donation income when asked directly. This sits alongside the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society's UK, Canadian and US branch figures recorded above, all of which are publicly filed; Germany's branch, one of the organization's largest national memberships, files no comparable public account. (1)The Charity Commission for England and Wales' public register records that the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain, Jehovah's Witnesses' registered charity for Britain (charity number 1077961), reported gross income of 38.46 million pounds sterling against expenditure of 78.17 million pounds sterling for the year ending 31 August 2025, its most recent filed accounts, down from gross income of 120.65 million pounds in the year to August 2024 and 100.90 million pounds in the year to August 2023. (1)The Christian Science Journal's November 2010 issue carried an Annual Meeting 2010 interview with Mother Church Treasurer Ned Odegaard, in which he stated that the Church held about 450 million dollars in funds on hand, against annual expenditures of about 102 million dollars, with no outstanding indebtedness. No more recent public figure of comparable scope was located in this pass. (1)The Church Commissioners for England, the historic endowment fund that supports the Church of England's ministry (the Anglican Communion's mother church, though not a treasury for the wider Communion), was valued at GBP 11.1 billion at the end of 2024, after a 10.3 percent investment return during the year. (1)The Church of Greece publishes no consolidated wealth or asset total for the institution as a whole: its roughly eighty metropolises, several hundred monasteries and thousands of parishes each manage and hold their own property independently, with nothing drawn together into one balance sheet. The Church's own Central Ecclesiastical Financial Service (EKYO), through its general director Father Salonon Antonios speaking to the newspaper Kathimerini, states that EKYO's own central annual budget fell from around 23 million euros in 2008 to around 6 million euros by 2016, a decline of roughly 75 percent, driven by the collapse of National Bank of Greece share dividends after 2008 and a 30 to 70 percent drop in rental income across its properties. EKYO's own real estate portfolio at that time comprised 19,000 hectares of arable land, 700 further land plots, 400 office spaces and 260 residences. This is EKYO's own central holding only, not a figure for the Church of Greece as a whole. (1)The Church of Sweden's own 2024 sustainable investments report states that its national-level investment assets, the funds managed centrally by the church nationally rather than by its thirteen dioceses, parishes and congregations, totaled 11,857 million Swedish kronor (roughly 1.1 billion US dollars) at the end of 2024, after a 10.0 percent return for the year. (1)The Church Pension Fund, chartered in 1914 by the New York State Legislature to administer The Episcopal Church's clergy and lay pension system, reports total net assets of approximately 17.47 billion US dollars (17,474,370,585 dollars) as of March 31, 2024 in its Ernst and Young LLP-audited combined financial statements, covering the Clergy Pension Plan, the Episcopal Church Lay Employees' Retirement Plan and the Staff Retirement Plan of the Church Pension Fund and Affiliates together; this figure does not include the separate assets of The Church Insurance Companies or Church Publishing Incorporated, its affiliated companies, which are reported at their own carrying values within the total. (1)The Coptic Orthodox Church's own Endowments Authority, the internal body managing the Church's waqf style land and real estate endowments, oversees roughly 4,667 feddans (about 4,900 acres) across 337 recorded endowments by its own published account; further endowments remain in dispute with Egypt's state Endowments Authority and are not included in this figure. (1)The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's own philanthropic arm, the ELCA Foundation, reported in its 2025 Annual Report that it held over 1.2 billion dollars in assets under stewardship, gifts and endowments managed on behalf of ELCA congregations, synods and churchwide ministries, having crossed the 1 billion dollar mark as of 31 December 2020. In 2024 the Foundation reported generating about 94.9 million dollars in total gifts and investments, including about 28.7 million dollars in new investments in its Ministry Growth Fund. This is the Foundation's own managed assets rather than a balance sheet for the ELCA's congregations, synods or churchwide organization, which report their finances separately. (1)The General Conference world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland ended fiscal year 2023 with approximately 310 million US dollars in net assets, 92 percent in cash and investments. GC tithe income for 2023 was about 91 million dollars, 13 million over the 78 million budgeted; GC offerings were about 97 million dollars against 74 million budgeted; GC program expenses were about 172 million dollars. (1)The most commonly cited estimate of the Church of Greece's centrally managed wealth is about 700 million euros, based on a 2008 Kathimerini newspaper investigation into assets directly managed by the Church's own central services; this figure excludes the separate holdings of individual dioceses, parishes and roughly 450 monasteries, and a competing estimate puts the true figure far higher (see the recorded dissent on this fact). (1)The Romanian Orthodox Church's wealth is estimated at more than three billion euros, based on landholdings of over 40,000 hectares of arable land and about 40,000 hectares of forest, shareholdings in more than fifteen companies, and annual revenues estimated at about 90 million euros drawn from state subventions, restituted communist era property, donations and sales of religious goods. (1)The Russian Orthodox Church publishes no accounts of its own, so no verified total exists. Sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin, a researcher on the Church's economy, estimated its total annual income in the 2000s at around 500 million rubles (roughly 7 million US dollars at the time), an unofficial figure reported because no official one exists. (1)The same February 2023 SEC settlement order records that Ensign Peak Advisors, the Church's centralized investment reserve fund, began in 1997 with an initial equity portfolio of about 7 billion US dollars, a figure distinct from the roughly 32 billion dollar 2018 snapshot the same order gives and that this entity already carries separately; the fund's value had grown further by the time of the 2023 order, a period during which, the SEC found, its size was kept from public 13F filings for more than two decades through the use of thirteen shell limited liability companies. (1)The same filing history shows total revenue of about 53,257 dollars, total expenses of about 72,516 dollars and total assets of about 756,185 dollars for the fiscal year ending June 2016, a sharp and unexplained decline from the 2012 figures. (1)The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' annual Charter compliance reports, compiled with survey research from Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate and audit procedures from StoneBridge Business Partners, track diocesan and eparchial payouts settling clergy sexual abuse claims since the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People took effect in 2002. Charter-era settlement totals reported through 2023 reached about 4.384 billion dollars; two further settlements in 2024, an 880 million dollar agreement by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced 16 October and a 323 million dollar agreement by the Diocese of Rockville Centre announced in September, brought the twenty-year running total for United States dioceses to roughly 5.59 billion dollars, with some tallies that also count a 2007 Los Angeles settlement placing the figure above 6.24 billion dollars. This is a national aggregate covering many separate dioceses and eparchies, counting settlement payouts rather than the church's total assets or income, and it is distinct from the finances of the Holy See itself, recorded separately on this atlas. (1)The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Canada, Jehovah's Witnesses' registered Canadian charity, reported total revenue of 141.817 million Canadian dollars, total expenses of 59.413 million dollars and funding reserves of 161.373 million dollars for the fiscal year ending August 2022, in its annual T3010 return filed with the Canada Revenue Agency, as reported by the charity-research nonprofit Charity Intelligence Canada, which states its analysis is based on financial statements the CRA provided. Charity Intelligence's own review flags a caveat worth carrying alongside the figures: it finds the numbers in the T3010 filing differ substantially from the charity's own financial statements, and considers the reported surplus (about 58 percent of revenue) outside what it regards as a reasonable range. (1)The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York sold its former Brooklyn Heights headquarters at 25-30 Columbia Heights, Dumbo (733,000 square feet), to a Kushner Companies, CIM Group and LIVWRK partnership for 340 million US dollars, closing 4 August 2016, and had earlier sold five further former Witnesses buildings in the same neighborhood, now known as Dumbo Heights, to a related Kushner/LIVWRK/RFR partnership for 375 million US dollars, both reported by the real estate trade publication The Real Deal. These are two specific, closed, publicly recorded New York City property sales during the Witnesses' broader relocation of their headquarters to Warwick, New York, not a total for the Society's remaining real estate or overall wealth. (1)Key TextAllThe Book of Common Prayer, in its American revisions. (1)The Tomos of Autocephaly it issues to newly independent Orthodox churches, such as the 2019 Tomos granted to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. (1)Legal StatusAllTurkey does not recognize Alevi cemevis as places of worship on the same legal footing as mosques administered by the Diyanet, the state Directorate of Religious Affairs. The European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously on 2 December 2014, in Cumhuriyetci Egitim ve Kultur Merkezi Vakfi v. Turkey, that refusing a cemevi the electricity-bill exemption granted to registered places of worship violated the right to enjoy Convention rights without discrimination, read together with freedom of religion. (1)Liturgical LanguageAllChurch Slavonic (3)Classical Arabic (6)Classical Armenian (Grabar) (2)Classical Syriac (2)Coptic (2)Geez (2)Georgian (1)Greek (liturgical) (5)Latin (1)Sanskrit (1)The vernacular (41)Marriage Position DetailAllAdopted by the Jubilee Bishops' Council, 13 to 16 August 2000, Section X of the Basis of the Social Concept insists that spouses remain faithful for life and that Orthodox marriage is indissoluble, citing Christ's words that what God has joined together, no one should separate. It names specific grounds recognised for divorce, including adultery, a spouse's falling away from Orthodoxy, prolonged disappearance, endangerment of a spouse's life or health and abandonment among others added later, and states that after a legitimate church divorce a second marriage is allowed to the innocent spouse, the party at fault permitted to remarry only after repentance and penance, a third marriage carrying a longer penance still under Saint Basil's rules. (1)At the 60th General Conference Session in San Antonio, Texas (2 to 11 July 2015), delegates revised Fundamental Belief 23's own wording from "partners" to "a man and a woman," explaining that "partners" had come to carry a meaning, including same-sex commitment, "not prevalent in 1980 when the statement was last revised." Separately, on 17 October 2012, the Annual Council of the General Conference Executive Committee voted, by hand vote of more than 200 pastors, lay people and denominational workers, "Seventh-day Adventist Response to Same-Sex Unions, A Reaffirmation of Christian Marriage," restating the same teaching in response to the wider same-sex marriage debate. Neither action changed the Church's underlying doctrine; both clarified and restated it. (1)Britain Yearly Meeting formally supported same-sex marriage in 2009, Australia Yearly Meeting agreed in January 2010 to treat all marriage requests alike regardless of a couple's sexual orientation, and Canadian Yearly Meeting affirmed support for same-sex civil marriage in 2003; Ireland and New Zealand yearly meetings permit a same-sex marriage within their own meetings as well. Central Yearly Meeting of Friends, Friends United Meeting and Evangelical Friends Church International hold marriage to be between a man and a woman, and Friends Church Kenya condemns homosexuality outright. None of the three major United States associations of Friends has made a statement affirming marriage equality, so the tradition as a whole carries no single teaching. (1)Episcopal News Service reported 26 July 2022 that the revised Lambeth Call on Human Dignity acknowledges there is no consensus across all forty-two of the Anglican Communion's provinces on the legitimacy of blessings and marriage rites for same-sex couples, a majority of provinces continuing to hold that same-gender marriage is not permissible while other provinces have blessed or welcomed a same-sex union or marriage after their own careful theological reflection and process of reception. (1)jw.org states "the only Scriptural grounds for divorce is sexual immorality" (Matthew 19:5, 6, 9). For remarriage to be scripturally valid, three conditions must hold together: sexual immorality (porneia) on the mate's part, a rejection or refusal to reconcile by the innocent mate, and a legal, final divorce. "Someone who chooses to divorce without Scriptural grounds is not Scripturally free to remarry" (1 Timothy 3:1, 5, 12). Separation for willful nonsupport (1 Timothy 5:8), extreme physical abuse (Psalm 11:5) or endangerment of one's spiritual life (Acts 5:29) is permitted but does not itself carry the right to remarry. Congregation elders neither authorize nor forbid a divorce, counseling instead from Bible principles. (1)On assuming office in 1971, Pope Shenouda III proclaimed that the church's own 1938 bylaw's nine named grounds for divorce, among them years of separation or desertion, declared death, long imprisonment, insanity, danger to a spouse including infectious disease, change of religion or sect, severe assault, taking monastic vows and adultery, would no longer be recognized, and restricted permissible divorce and remarriage to adultery and change of religion alone. The church formally amended its own regulations in 2008 to codify these same two grounds. In a June 2010 press conference, reported by the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, Pope Shenouda defended the restriction as resting on marriage's standing as a sacrament and a religious duty rather than merely an administrative action, after an Egyptian administrative court ruling had attempted to mandate wider grounds for remarriage. (1)President Gordon B. Hinckley read "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" at the General Relief Society Meeting on 23 September 1995, the Church's fifth proclamation, stating that "marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children." The proclamation formally reaffirmed, rather than introduced, a position already in force since the 1890 Manifesto ended the Church's earlier sanction of plural marriage. (1)The Catechism describes marriage as "the matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life," a covenant between the baptized that Christ raised to the dignity of a sacrament. Canon 1141 of the Code of Canon Law states plainly that a marriage of this kind, once consummated, "can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death." What looks from outside like the Church ending a marriage, an annulment, is not that: a decree of nullity holds that no valid marriage existed in the first place, most often for a defect in consent or capacity at the time of the wedding, and it is a declaration about the past rather than a dissolution of a real marriage in the present. (1)The Ja'fari school of Twelver Shia jurisprudence holds nikah mut'ah lawful: a contract for a stipulated time period and a stated dower, ending automatically when the term expires, without divorce. Its basis is Qur'an 4:24's term istimta' and hadith from Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq naming the contract's four essential conditions (formula, eligible persons, a stipulated period, and a dower). Twelver sources hold "the Prophet did not ban it," attributing the later prohibition instead to the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab rather than to Muhammad, differing from the Sunni account that the Prophet himself forbade it at Khaybar. The Zaydi Shia school, unlike the Ja'fari school, sides with the Sunni schools in prohibiting mut'ah. (1)The Orthodox Church in America's own teaching states the Church "in its concern for the salvation of its people" permits a divorced person to remarry a second and even a third time, "an act of oikonomia (economy or dispensation) and of philanthropia (loving kindness)." Subsequent marriages follow a different, penitential liturgical order than a first marriage. Orthodox practice traces this limit to the Tome of Union of the Council of Constantinople in 920, which forbids a fourth marriage outright and permits a third, with heavy penance, generally only to those under forty with no children from a preceding marriage. This is one jurisdiction's own statement, not a pan-Orthodox synodal declaration, but the underlying position is held broadly across Orthodox jurisdictions. (1)Membership Figure As OfAll1629-01-01 (1)1840-01-01 (1)1868-01-01 (1)1876-01-01 (1)1900-01-01 (1)1910-01-01 (1)1912-01-01 (1)1914-01-01 (1)1922-01-01 (1)1923-01-01 (2)1924-01-01 (1)1936-01-01 (1)1958-01-01 (1)1970-01-01 (2)1970-12-31 (1)1971-12-31 (1)1972-01-01 (1)1988-12-31 (1)1990-01-01 (2)1991-01-01 (1)1996-01-01 (1)2000-08-31 (1)2000-12-31 (2)2002-01-01 (1)2003-01-01 (1)2004-01-01 (1)2006-01-01 (1)2007-01-01 (2)2008-01-01 (1)2009-01-01 (4)2010-01-01 (6)2011-01-01 (6)2013-01-01 (1)2014-01-01 (5)2015-01-01 (3)2016-01-01 (5)2016-12-31 (1)2017-01-01 (1)2017-10-30 (1)2017-11-08 (1)2018-01-01 (3)2019-01-01 (3)2019-07-03 (1)2020-01-01 (6)2021-01-01 (3)2021-12-31 (1)2022-01-01 (11)2022-12-31 (1)2023-01-01 (3)2023-04-29 (1)2023-07-01 (1)2023-08-08 (1)2024-01-01 (5)2024-03-01 (1)2024-08-31 (1)2024-12-31 (2)2025-01-01 (3)2025-08-01 (1)2026-02-01 (1)2026-08-14 (3)2026-08-16 (1)Membership Over TimeAllA 1921 to 1922 administrative census of the Lattakia region recorded 253,000 Alawites, about 71 percent of the district's population. (1)A 2013 demographic projection by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary put the combined Pentecostal, Charismatic and Neo-charismatic Renewalist movement at 709.8 million by 2020, up from 62.7 million in 1970, a more than elevenfold rise over five decades, and considerably above the 2010 Pew figure taken alone. (1)A 2015 poll by the Kappa Research Firm, relayed in the U.S. State Department's 2016 religious freedom report, found 81.4 percent of Greece's population self-identified as Greek Orthodox, 2.9 percent as belonging to other religious groups, and 14.7 percent as atheist. (1)A 2018 estimate put the worldwide membership of the six Oriental Orthodox churches (Coptic, Ethiopian Tewahedo, Eritrean Tewahedo, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac Orthodox and Malankara Orthodox Syrian) at more than 50 million. (1)A 2022 United States Department of State international religious freedom report estimated 81 to 90 percent of Greece's population as Greek Orthodox, a modest decline from the mid-century high but still an overwhelming majority. (1)A separate 1923 Alawite census recorded 173,000 Alawites. (1)An estimated 1,300,000 people held membership in the Churches of Christ in the United States around 1990, a scholarly estimate rather than a count taken from a single census or from any central membership roll, since the movement is congregationally governed and keeps no denomination-wide register. (1)An independent August 2023 analysis estimated individual membership at 310,000 to 656,523, applying the United Methodist Church's own 2020 average congregation size to the Global Methodist Church's roughly 3,100 congregations at that time, since the denomination itself does not publish an individual membership total. (1)An independent count, the World Christian Database, published by Edinburgh University Press, put the 2020 figure at 70,226,000, between the Council's own detailed table and its own later higher claim. (1)Armenia's 2011 national census recorded 2,797,187 people, 92.7 percent of the population, as Armenian Apostolic. (1)As of 2024, the ELCA's own reporting gives 2,677,239 baptized members across 8,386 congregations, a decline of just over half from the 1988 founding total. (1)As of December 31, 1971, worldwide Church membership reached 3,090,953, according to the Church's own annual statistical report presented at the 142nd Annual General Conference, a gain of about 5.5 percent over 1970. (1)As of December 31, 2000, worldwide Church membership reached 11,068,861, according to the Church's own Statistical Report, 2000, presented at General Conference. (1)As of December 31, 2024, worldwide Church membership reached 17,887,212, according to the Church's own 2025 Statistical Report. This recorded membership counts all baptized or blessed persons not removed from the rolls, and exceeds self-identification in national censuses and surveys. (1)At the end of 1970, worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church membership stood at 2,051,864, according to the General Conference's own Annual Statistical Report. (1)Britain Yearly Meeting, the national body for Quakers in Britain, recorded 14,430 members in 2009, according to its own tabular statement of membership statistics. This is a Britain-specific figure, distinct from the global Quaker population estimate recorded above. (1)By 1 January 2004, shortly before its merger into the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, the church's own rolls had fallen to 1,823,085 members, a decline of more than 1.2 million from its 1970 figure. (1)By 1900 the worldwide Mennonite membership had grown to about 150,000, with roughly 40,000 in Russia, 50,000 in the United States and 25,000 in Canada, a historical count compiled by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online from denominational and regional membership records of the period. (1)By 1924, after the Treaty of Lausanne's compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the share had risen to about 89 percent, making Greece the most religiously homogeneous state in the Balkans. (1)By 2010, the same study found the worldwide Orthodox population had roughly doubled to nearly 260 million, 4 percent of world population and 12 percent of the world's Christians, even as Russia's Orthodox population alone surged past 100 million after the fall of the Soviet Union; Orthodoxy grew more slowly than Christianity as a whole over the century, which is why its share of world Christianity fell even as its raw numbers rose. (1)By 2013, LWF membership had grown to 72,268,329 across 142 member churches. (1)By 2015, LWF membership stood at 74,261,862 across 145 member churches. (1)By 2015, the same World Christian Database put worldwide Anglican Communion membership at 90.771 million, nearly double the 1970 total, even as the Episcopal Church in the United States roughly halved over the same period. The Communion's center of gravity shifted decisively toward Africa, which grew from 7.718 million in 1970 to 56.947 million in 2015, while combined North American Anglican membership (the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada) fell from 4.373 million to 2.537 million. (1)By 2018, the same British Social Attitudes survey found Anglican self-identification down to 12 percent, against those identifying with no religion at all rising from 31 percent in the survey's 1983 starting year to 52 percent by 2018, the survey organization NatCen's own most recently published comparison. (1)By 2019, Britain Yearly Meeting membership had fallen to 12,498, a loss of 1,932 members over the preceding decade, according to the same tabular statement. (1)By 2019, LWF membership had reached 77,493,989 across 148 member churches. (1)By 2020, an independent estimate put the combined total higher, at 72 million. (1)By 2021, the same Statistics for Mission return recorded average weekly attendance at 605,000, the low point of the pandemic-era decline, down nearly 30 percent from 2019. (1)By 2022 the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s reported active membership had fallen to 1,140,665, a loss of 53,105 members in a single year. (1)By 2022, average weekly attendance had recovered to 654,000, an increase of nearly 50,000 that the Church of England's own release called the second consecutive year of post-pandemic growth, though still well below the 2019 level. (1)By 2022, Churches of Christ counted 1,087,559 members in 11,776 congregations across the United States, a decline from the 1990 estimate, drawn from an independent survey of American religious congregations rather than from any count the movement keeps of itself. (1)By 2022, the U.S. State Department's religious freedom report gave a wider range drawn from multiple research polls, 81 to 90 percent of the population identifying as Greek Orthodox, 4 to 15 percent as atheist and 2 percent as Muslim, a range consistent with, though less precise than, the 2015 Kappa Research figure. (1)By 2023, Episcopal Church membership had fallen to 1,547,779 active baptized members across 6,754 congregations, according to the same parochial report data, though average Sunday attendance recovered to just under 411,000 that year, up from a pandemic low of 310,000 in 2021. (1)By 2023, LWF membership stood at 78,431,111 across 150 member churches, the federation's own most recently published figure, a steady rise across the whole fourteen-year table rather than the decline seen on several other bodies on this axis. (1)By 2024 that same local Istanbul community had fallen to approximately 1,500 people, following the 1955 pogrom, further legal pressure and decades of emigration. (1)By 2024 the Mennonite World Conference counted the wider Anabaptist-Mennonite family, including bodies outside its own membership, at about 2.13 million worldwide, in the world communion's own published membership statistics. (1)By 2024, overall in-person attendance across the week had risen to just over 701,000, the fourth consecutive year of growth, with usual Sunday attendance at 582,000 and a wider "regular worshippers" count of 1.02 million, the Church of England's own most recent published figure. (1)By 2025 membership had fallen to 5,365,542, 50.7 percent of the population, after automatic enrollment ended in 1996 and the church ceased being the state church in 2000. (1)By February 2026 the Global Methodist Church reported having surpassed 7,000 congregations worldwide, served by at least 4,500 pastors. (1)By July 2023 roughly 3,000 congregations had joined the Global Methodist Church since its May 2022 launch. The denomination reports its size by congregation count rather than individual membership. (1)By the 2011 census, Orthodox Christian identification had fallen slightly to 6,079,396 people, 84.6 percent of the population. (1)By the 2014 wave of the same Religious Landscape Study, the Catholic share of US adults had fallen to 21 percent. (1)By the 2016 census this had fallen 2.0 percent to 126,414. (1)By the 2021 census's partial results, Romanian Orthodox identification had fallen to 73.4 percent of the population, a decline of roughly 2.3 million Orthodox identifying inhabitants over the decade. (1)By the 2021 census, Orthodox identification had fallen to 74.5 percent, a change the census authority attributes largely to a sharp rise in respondents leaving the religion question unanswered, 17.3 percent in 2021 against 1.1 percent in 2011, rather than to an equivalent real decline in Orthodox identification. (1)By the 2024 census, Geostat recorded 3,223,206 Georgian Orthodox adherents, a rise of 4.1 percent in absolute numbers since 2014, but their share of the total population had fallen to 82.0 percent, since other groups, chiefly Muslims, grew faster over the same decade. (1)By the early 2000s, the community's combined Catholic and Orthodox branches were estimated at roughly six to seven million worldwide, a scale nearly thirty times the seventeenth century figure. (1)By the end of 2000, worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church membership had reached 11,687,239, according to the same Annual Statistical Report series. (1)By the end of 2016, worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church membership had grown to 20,008,779, according to the same Annual Statistical Report series, nearly ten times the 1970 total. (1)By the most recent 2022 census, Orthodox Christian identification had fallen further to 5,387,426 people, 81.1 percent of the population, continuing the same gradual two-decade decline recorded in 2002 and 2011. (1)By the same report's own 2015-16 survey fieldwork, Orthodox self-identification in Russia had nearly doubled to 71 percent, a genuine independent measure of the post-Soviet religious revival distinct from and far lower than the Patriarch's own worldwide membership claim, since this figure describes self-identified Orthodox Christians within Russia alone. (1)Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) membership had fallen to 278,000 by 2022, a decline of roughly 77 percent since its 1958 to 1964 peak, per the Christian Post's reporting on the denomination's own statistics, cited in the same Christian Standard analysis. (1)Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) membership peaked at just under 2 million in 1958, per a Christian Standard analysis of the denomination's own reported rolls. (1)Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II stated on 29 April 2023 that the number of Copts in Egypt is estimated at 15 million, the church's own count, well above both the national census figure and the 2008 survey estimate. (1)Craig Atwood's 2012 entry on the Moravian Church in The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization put its worldwide membership at approximately 750,000 in 2007, a scholarly estimate rather than a count drawn from the church's own province-by-province reporting. (1)Egypt's 1996 national census recorded Christians, the great majority of them Coptic Orthodox, at 5.7 percent of the population, a figure Pew Research Center reports directly from Egyptian government census records. (1)For the 2000 service year, Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide reported a peak of 6,035,564 publishers active in the field ministry (average 5,783,003 per month), according to the Watch Tower Society's own Worldwide Report 2000 Grand Totals. (1)For the 2024 service year (September 2023 through August 2024), Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide reported a peak of 9,043,460 publishers and Memorial attendance exceeding 21 million, according to the Watch Tower Society's own 2024 Service Year Report. (1)Georgia's 2014 national census recorded Georgian Orthodox Church adherents at 83.4 percent of the population, according to the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat). (1)Ibadi Muslims are most often put at 35 to 45 percent of Oman's population, roughly 1.76 to 2.25 million people as of Oman's 2023 population of just over 5 million, with the government publishing no official religious count to settle the range. (1)In 1912, before the Balkan Wars and the Greek-Turkish population exchange, about 43 percent of the population within Greece's then borders was Greek Orthodox. (1)In 1914, under the fifty-four year presidency of Joseph Smith III, the church (then the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) counted approximately 74,000 members. (1)In 1970, the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk) recorded 3,075,565 members on its own membership rolls, at that time the largest religious body in the Netherlands. (1)In 1972 the Church of Sweden counted 7,754,784 members, 95.2 percent of the Swedish population, near the high point produced by automatic membership for any newborn child of a member. (1)In 2010, an estimated 800 million people worldwide were Protestant Christians, 37 percent of 2.18 billion Christians, per the Pew Research Center's country-by-country demographic analysis of censuses and surveys. (1)In 2010, the Episcopal Church reported approximately 1.96 million baptized members across 7,067 domestic congregations, according to the denomination's own annual parochial report data. (1)In 2018, the Council disclosed a considerably higher estimate for its own 80 member denominations, approximately 80 million people, roughly double its own detailed table's total for four years earlier. (1)In its first full year after the January 1988 merger that created it, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America reported 5,288,471 baptized members at the end of 1988, according to its own Summary of Congregational Statistics. (1)In the 2023-24 wave of the same study, the Catholic share of US adults stood at 19 percent, continuing a gradual decline from 24 percent in 2007, an independent self-identification measure recorded here separately from any church-reported baptized-member count. (1)In the Pew Research Center's 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, 24 percent of US adults identified as Catholic. This is a national self-identification survey, a different measure from the Church's own count of baptized or registered Catholics, which the Vatican and individual dioceses record separately. (1)In the Pew Research Center's 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, a telephone survey of 35,071 US adults, Jehovah's Witnesses accounted for less than 1 percent of the US adult population, based on 245 respondents who self-identified as Jehovah's Witnesses. This is a national self-identification survey, a different measure in kind from the Watch Tower Society's own worldwide active-publisher counts recorded above, which count only those engaged in the organization's field ministry rather than everyone who self-identifies with the faith. (1)In the Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, 2 percent of US adults identified as Latter-day Saints (Mormons), a share Pew describes as virtually unchanged from both the 2007 and 2014 waves of the same study. This is a national survey of self-identification among US adults, a different measure from the Church's own worldwide membership rolls recorded above, and it is one reason independent counts of active or self-identifying members read lower than recorded church membership. (1)Independent of the Church's own attendance counts, the 2014 wave of Britain's British Social Attitudes survey found 17 percent of respondents self-identifying as Anglican, a fall of 23 percentage points since the survey began in 1983, a measure of religious identity rather than attendance. (1)Independent of the church's own count, Pew Research Center's Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe report found that only 37 percent of Russian adults identified as Orthodox Christian in 1991, near the collapse of the Soviet Union, a self-identification figure rather than a membership roll. (1)Independent studies put actual US Christian Science membership under 50,000 by 2009, based on the steep drop in the number of congregations and registered practitioners, well below the church's own contemporaneous worldwide claim of about 400,000. (1)Ireland's 2011 census recorded 129,039 people identifying as Church of Ireland in the Republic of Ireland. (1)ISKCON reports about a million congregational members worldwide, alongside a much smaller core of about 10,000 full-time temple members worldwide. (1)Membership has fallen to three living Shakers as of August 2025, all at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, the only active Shaker community left anywhere, after a new member joined that month. (1)Membership peaked in the 1970s and has since declined; the church's 2020 financial report recorded 250,000 members in 1,100 congregations across 59 countries. (1)no count isolating this tradition exists (1)No independent national census or survey counts Ismaili Muslims specifically, since they are generally counted only within a country's broader Shia or Muslim totals. The Ismaili Imamat, the community's own institutional governing authority, states that the community numbers approximately 12 to 15 million people living in more than 70 countries, a self reported figure carrying no fixed reference year of its own. (1)no single combined figure exists (1)On October 30, 2017, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow stated that the Russian Orthodox Church numbers 180 million faithful throughout the world, alongside 36,000 churches, 1,000 monasteries and 56 seminaries, adding that about 75 percent of Russians consider themselves Orthodox. This is the church's own claimed figure, from its own leader, not an independently verified count. (1)Pew Research Center's 2017 study of global Orthodox Christianity estimates the worldwide Orthodox population at about 124 million in 1910, 7 percent of the world's population at the time and 20 percent of the world's Christians. (1)Pew Research Center's December 2011 analysis of Center for the Study of Global Christianity data estimated about 279 million Pentecostal Christians and about 305 million Charismatic Christians worldwide as of 2010, together more than a quarter of the world's roughly two billion Christians. (1)Portuguese-era clergy reports from 1629 put about 250,000 Syrian Christians in Malabar, one of the earliest reasonably documented estimates of the community's size. (1)Romania's 2011 national census recorded 16,307,004 people, 81.04 percent of the population, as Romanian Orthodox, an actual census count of self-declared religious affiliation. (1)Scholarly and minority-rights estimates of the Alevi population within Turkey vary widely, from roughly ten to more than twenty million people, since Turkish census forms do not ask about sect or communal identity within Islam and no other government count exists. (1)Sociologist Rodney Stark's research puts US Christian Science membership at just over 100,000 by 1990, roughly a third of the 1936 count, continuing a decline that began after the movement's 1930s and 1940s peak. (1)The 1936 US Census of Religious Bodies counted about 268,915 Christian Scientists in the United States, close to the movement's historical peak. (1)The 2008 Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey, a household survey of more than 16,000 women ages 15 to 49, found about 5 percent of respondents identifying as Christian, which Pew Research Center converts to roughly 4 million people nationwide, a figure it found consistent with the census data rather than with higher church and media claims of 10 percent or more. (1)The 2010 Eritrea Population and Health Survey found 56.3 percent of respondents Orthodox Christian, the great majority of them Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo, out of 61.4 percent identifying as Christian overall. (1)The 2022 census recorded 124,749, a 2 percent increase since 2016, the first rise in the Republic of Ireland series in decades. (1)The 2022 census recorded 2,793,042 people, 95.4 percent of the population, as Armenian Apostolic, a slightly larger share of a smaller total population than 2011. (1)The Annual Cyclopedia recorded 164,000 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church members in 1868, a rapid rise from about 42,000 two years earlier, as the church sent missionaries into the South after the Civil War. This is a church-reported membership roll. (1)The Annual Cyclopedia recorded 207,000 African Methodist Episcopal Church members in 1876, up from about 70,000 a decade earlier, as missionaries planted new congregations across the South among the newly emancipated after the Civil War. This is a church-reported membership roll, not an independent count. (1)The Association of Religion Data Archives' 2020 Religious Congregations and Membership Study counted 254,571 Progressive National Baptist Convention members across 363 congregations in the United States, compiled from congregation-level reporting rather than from the convention's own head office. (1)The Association of Religion Data Archives' independent count of American congregations recorded 304,414 National Baptist Convention of America International members across 575 churches in 2010, compiled from congregation records rather than from the denomination's own reporting. (1)The Baptist World Alliance's own 2025 census counts 283 member Baptist fellowships in 138 countries and territories, 178,000 churches and 53,000,000 baptized members; the figure explicitly excludes the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest single Baptist body in the United States, which withdrew from the Alliance in 2004. (1)The Church of Christ, Scientist has continued to state a worldwide membership figure of around 400,000, a number that has stayed essentially unchanged in its own public statements for decades despite the Manual of the Mother Church's bar on publishing detailed membership statistics. (1)The Church of England's own Statistics for Mission return recorded average weekly attendance for all ages at 854,000 in 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic closed churches. (1)The CME Church's own website states more than 1.2 million members across the United States as of 2025, with mission and sister churches in Haiti, Jamaica and fourteen African nations, a church-reported figure. (1)The Free Methodist Church reported a worldwide membership of more than one million people by the end of 2011, including roughly 1,000 congregations and more than 76,000 members in the United States, a church-reported figure from the denomination's own history. (1)The Free Methodist Church's own 2022 Yearbook recorded 1,547,820 members worldwide, continued growth from the 2011 figure driven mostly outside the United States, where the denomination's own domestic membership has been declining over the past decade. (1)The gap between identification and practice is large here too: Pew's companion Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century report, drawing on the same 2015-16 fieldwork, found just 6 percent of Russian Orthodox Christian adults report attending church at least weekly, a fraction of the 71 percent who self-identify as Orthodox at all. (1)The Lutheran World Federation's own published membership table recorded 70,053,316 members across 140 member churches in 2009, the earliest year in its continuously updated table. (1)The Moravian mission society Herrnhuter Missionshilfe reported worldwide Moravian Church membership at 1,112,120 in a December 2016 update, the church's own tally through its member provinces, most of them in eastern Africa and the Caribbean. (1)The National Baptist Convention of America International has continued to state its own membership at approximately 3.5 million people in roughly 4,000 churches into the early 2020s, a church-reported figure repeated in the denomination's reporting to the Baptist World Alliance. (1)The Patriarchate's native Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul numbered roughly 135,000 after the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange exempted them from resettlement. (1)The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the tradition's largest American body, reported active membership of 1,193,770 in 2021. (1)The Progressive National Baptist Convention has continued to report its own membership at approximately 1.5 million people across 1,362 congregations, including its international churches, as of 2022, well above the independent United States-only count from two years earlier. (1)The same article characterizes BWA affiliated bodies as accounting for about half the Baptists in the world, implying a total worldwide Baptist population on the order of 100 million once non-BWA bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention are folded back in, a much rougher, unofficial figure than the Alliance's own detailed member count. (1)The same Pew 2009 report estimated Shia Muslims at 10 to 13 percent of the world's Muslim population, 154 million to 200 million people, most concentrated in Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq. This figure counts Shia Islam as a whole, Twelver, Ismaili and Zaidi branches together, not Twelvers alone; Twelvers form the large majority of the world's Shia population, but Pew's report does not itself break the figure down by branch, and Pew states throughout that sectarian figures of this kind are less precise than its overall Muslim count. (1)The Shaker movement reached its documented peak around 1840, with about 5,000 full members across its communities in the northeastern and midwestern United States. (1)The six churches' own combined claimed total runs higher still, approximately 87 million, a self-reported figure carrying no fixed reference year of its own and considerably above either independent estimate. (1)The Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia's 2002 national census recorded 6,371,584 people, 85 percent of the population, as Orthodox Christian, an actual census count of self-declared religious affiliation. (1)The Statistical Service of the Republic of Cyprus's 2011 census of the government controlled area recorded 89.08 percent of inhabitants as Orthodox Christian. (1)The World Christian Database, compiled by Gina Zurlo and Todd Johnson of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, puts worldwide Anglican Communion membership at 47.394 million in 1970, as reported in David Goodhew's 2022 analysis for Covenant. The Anglican Communion Office's own website states an aggregate current figure (variously 80 to 110 million across different pages) but names no reference year or counting method for it, so it does not itself provide a dated series; the academic World Christian Database data is used here instead. (1)The World Christian Encyclopedia's independent 2020 count put Reformed and Presbyterian denomination membership at 60 million, considerably below the communion's own claim, in part because that figure excludes the United and Uniting Churches the communion's own 100 million figure also counts. (1)The World Communion of Reformed Churches' own full member denominations claim about 100 million members combined, a self-reported figure spanning more than 230 member churches in over 100 countries. (1)The World Council of Churches' current member-church profile lists Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church membership at 2,000,000, a headcount rather than a population share, recorded separately from the 2010 survey percentage since the two measure different things. (1)The World Methodist Council's own detailed statistical table, compiled from its member churches' individually reported figures for the 2011 to 2016 period, totals 39,745,196 formal members and 51,286,152 in the wider communion figure. (1)The World Methodist Council's own statistical table, compiled for the 2011 to 2016 reporting period, recorded 1,432,795 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church members, a church-reported count submitted by the denomination itself. (1)The World Methodist Council's own statistical table, compiled for the 2011 to 2016 reporting period, recorded 2,500,000 African Methodist Episcopal Church members and 3,250,000 people in the wider communion figure, a church-reported count submitted by the denomination itself. (1)The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches' 2008 edition estimated 850,000 Christian Methodist Episcopal Church members in 3,500 congregations for 2006, an outside compilation of the denomination's own reported rolls. (1)Observance NoteAllFriends have historically declined to observe holy days at all, including Christmas and Easter, holding that every day is alike and that setting some apart gives them a standing scripture does not give them. Meetings for worship on those dates are kept as ordinary meetings. (1)Ibn Muljam, a Kharijite, assassinated Ali ibn Abi Talib in 661 CE in reprisal for the Nahrawan massacre (1)Jehovah's Witnesses do not observe Christmas, Easter or birthdays, holding that the dates are of pagan derivation and that scripture gives no warrant for commemorating them. The Memorial of Christ's death, kept once a year on the evening of 14 Nisan, is the one annual observance. (1)Mount Athos, the autonomous monastic peninsula, lies in Greek territory but under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch rather than the Church of Greece (1)Practices open communion and has affirmed the full participation of LGBTQ members in ministry since 2013 (1)Seventeenth century liturgical reforms under Patriarch Nikon produced the lasting Old Believer schism of 1666 to 1667 (1)The Westminster standards recognise no holy day under the gospel but the Lord's Day, and Presbyterian churches suppressed the feast days at the Reformation. Christmas, Easter and Advent are widely kept today, so the present practice reverses the confessional position rather than following it. (1)Vardan Mamikonian, who died leading Armenian resistance at the 451 Battle of Avarayr, is venerated as a martyr saint (1)OrdinationAllAn unpaid lay ministry rather than a professional clergy (2)Authority conferred by initiation rather than by ordination (4)Celibacy required of the ordained (2)Conferred by a teacher's certification of learning (1)Conferred by election (1)Married clergy permitted (15)No ordination; authority rests on learning or on the whole body (6)Office passes by descent (2)Open to women and men (19)Restricted to men (22)The full female ordination lineage is held lapsed; revival contested (1)Varies between provinces or member bodies (15)Ordination Practice DetailAllOrdains women to all three orders; first regular ordinations of women priests 1976, first woman bishop 1989 (1)The Orthodox Church in America's own teaching page states plainly that "the Orthodox Church precludes the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopacy" as "a matter of Holy Tradition," and, honestly, that organized public controversy over the question is itself recent, "with roots outside the Orthodox Church," rather than the position itself carrying a datable point of adoption. This is one jurisdiction's own statement, not a pan-Orthodox synodal declaration, but the position it states is held broadly across Orthodox jurisdictions. (1)This restriction has never had a datable point of adoption within the tradition's own account of itself. Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, issued 22 May 1994, is a reaffirmation of that continuous teaching rather than its origin: the letter itself states that priestly ordination "has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone" and that the teaching "has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church," declaring only that the Church has no authority to change it. (1)Origin AccountAllIndependence from Antioch affirmed at the Council of Ephesus in 431, on the claim of foundation by Barnabas (1)Traces its foundation to the Apostle Andrew and holds the historic title first among equals (primus inter pares) among the Eastern Orthodox churches. (1)Origin of the NameAllAdopted Community of Christ in 2001, replacing Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to center its identity on Christian discipleship (1)Anglican from Anglicana ecclesia, the Church of England; Communion for the fellowship of autonomous member churches (1)Apostolic for the tradition that the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew first preached in Armenia (1)Arabic kharaja, to go out or exit, referring to their withdrawal from Ali's camp (1)From Greek, the language of the eastern Roman empire and of the Byzantine liturgy, and not from the modern Greek state (1)Its liturgy and everyday speech are Romanian, a Romance language, unique among Orthodox national churches (1)Origin PeriodAll"Alevi" as a collective name for these communities is largely modern (1)657 CE, following the Battle of Siffin (1)A distinct communion after Chalcedon in 451 (1)A distinct communion after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (1)A state under the Fatimids from 909 (1)Christianization of the Latin-speaking population of Roman Dacia (1)Distinct from Rome after the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 (1)Launched in May 2022 (1)The Twelver line closes with the occultation of the twelfth imam in 874, and the doctrine is systematised in the tenth and eleventh centuries (1)Origin Period End YearAll52 (1)301 (1)337 (1)340 (1)431 (1)451 (2)600 (1)657 (1)750 (1)909 (1)941 (1)1100 (1)1204 (1)1219 (1)1448 (1)1467 (1)1527 (2)1530 (1)1555 (1)1559 (1)1561 (1)1571 (2)1592 (1)1600 (1)1612 (1)1652 (1)1784 (1)1789 (1)1816 (1)1821 (1)1830 (1)1832 (1)1850 (1)1860 (2)1863 (1)1867 (1)1870 (1)1879 (1)1906 (2)1915 (1)1931 (1)1954 (1)1961 (1)1966 (1)1967 (1)1988 (1)2022 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll30 (3)42 (1)49 (1)52 (1)295 (1)320 (1)326 (1)431 (1)632 (1)657 (1)680 (1)765 (1)800 (1)988 (1)1200 (1)1219 (1)1457 (1)1517 (2)1525 (1)1527 (1)1534 (2)1536 (2)1560 (1)1571 (1)1609 (1)1647 (1)1738 (1)1787 (1)1789 (1)1796 (1)1801 (2)1820 (1)1844 (1)1850 (1)1860 (2)1866 (1)1870 (2)1880 (1)1901 (1)1946 (1)1961 (1)1962 (1)1965 (1)1988 (1)2022 (1)Place of OriginAllAlexandria and the Egyptian Nile valley (1)Allegheny, Pennsylvania (1)Amsterdam, among English exiles, and then England (1)Anatolia (1)Arabia, Iraq and later Iran (1)Basra, in Iraq; established in Oman and the Mzab (1)Boston, Massachusetts (1)Cincinnati, Ohio (1)Constantinople (modern Istanbul), seat of the Patriarch since the fourth century. (1)Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean (1)Cyprus, held to have been evangelised by Barnabas, which is the ground its independence was affirmed on at Ephesus in 431 (1)Egypt, Syria, Armenia and Ethiopia (1)England (1)England, spread worldwide through colonial and missionary expansion (1)Geneva, and the Swiss and French Reformed cities (1)Iraq, and then North Africa and Egypt under the Fatimids (1)Ireland. (1)Jackson, Tennessee (1)Kentucky (Restoration Movement origin); Tennessee and Texas (later concentration) (1)Kentucky and Pennsylvania (1)Kufa, Iraq (1)Kunvald, Bohemia (1)Kyiv, capital of Kievan Rus (1)Manchester and London (1)Midwestern United States; headquartered in Independence, Missouri (1)Montgomery, Alabama (1)Muziris and the Malabar Coast, present day Kerala (1)New England and Michigan (1)New York City (1)New York City, New York (1)Oxford and London (1)Pekin, New York (1)Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1)Roman Dacia, present day Romania (1)Rome (1)Scotland (1)Serbia, under the Nemanjic dynasty (1)Sweden. (1)Syria. (1)The Aksumite kingdom, spanning present day Eritrea and Ethiopia (1)The dioceses of the Ecumenical Patriarchate that fell within the borders of the new Greek kingdom (1)The German and Swiss lands (1)The Greek-speaking sees of the eastern Roman world, with Constantinople at the centre from the fourth century (1)The Kingdom of Armenia (1)The kingdom of Kartli (eastern Georgia) (1)The Low Countries and north Germany (1)The Netherlands. (1)The New Forest and southern England (1)The north of England (1)Topeka, Kansas, and Los Angeles, California (1)United States, formed by a 1988 merger of three Lutheran bodies. (1)United States. (2)Western New York State (1)Wittenberg, in Saxony (1)Zurich, and the Swiss and south German lands (1)Polity DetailAllNo single polity today: the inheritance is divided among Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Catholic, Malankara Orthodox, Jacobite Syrian and Mar Thoma Syrian churches (1)Position on Entire SanctificationAllAn instantaneous second work of grace, subsequent to regeneration: the consecrated believer, on exercising faith in the atoning blood of Christ, is cleansed in that moment from all inward sin and empowered for service. The American Holiness position, written into this church's own articles of religion rather than left to Wesley's sermons. (1)Carried in the Confession of Faith of the Evangelical United Brethren Church: the believer is not only delivered from the guilt of sin but washed from its pollution and saved from its power, and enabled by grace to love God with all the heart. (1)Held in the Wesleyan sense of perfect love, and carried through the connexion by its own preachers, Jarena Lee and Amanda Berry Smith among them, rather than set out as a separate article of religion. (1)Held in the Wesleyan sense of perfect love, and preached throughout the connexion by Julia A. J. Foote, whose ministry tied the Holiness revival and the ordination of women together in one career. (1)Position on JustificationAllFaith Alone (3)No Communion Wide Standard (1)Position on MarriageAllMarriage is held to be a lifelong, monogamous, indissoluble union; remarriage after divorce is not sanctioned while a spouse lives (1)Marriage is held to be monogamous, with remarriage after divorce sanctioned under specified conditions (6)Marriage may licitly be polygynous (1)No single uniform teaching on marriage's terms holds across the body (2)Position on PredestinationAllDouble Predestination (1)Election Affirmed Reprobation Unstated (1)Single Predestination (1)Unsettled (1)Position on SexualityAllSame-sex marriage is performed and LGBT clergy are ordained on equal terms with heterosexual clergy (5)Same-sex orientation or practice is held to bar full membership or participation (5)Same-sex sexual relationships are held contrary to teaching; LGBT individuals are welcomed as members but not ordained, and same-sex unions are not blessed (13)The body holds no single settled position; the question is actively and openly contested within it (8)Position on the EucharistAllNo Communion Wide Definition (1)Sacramental Union (1)Spiritual Reception by Faith (2)Position on UsuryAllInterest is permitted but bound by ethical constraints against exploiting the poor (1)Practice StatusAllAlawites keep their core doctrinal texts closed to outsiders and do not accept converts; the community's esoteric teaching is transmitted only within initiated lineages and is not reconstructed here. (1)Alexandrian Wicca, founded as a close relative of the Gardnerian tradition, shares its three-degree initiatory structure and oath-bound Book of Shadows, transmitted between initiates rather than published, though its general history and structure are documented by outside scholarship. (1)Anglican doctrine and liturgy, set out in the Book of Common Prayer and openly published, are studied and practised without a closed initiatory core, and Anglican churches generally welcome visitors and outside study. (1)Baptist congregations are typically independent, and their doctrine and worship are published openly with no closed initiatory core; believer's baptism itself is a public rite rather than a secret one. (1)Catholic doctrine, liturgy and canon law are published in full and freely available, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Church actively welcomes outside study. Reception of the Eucharist by non-Catholics is restricted under canon law, a specific and openly stated rule rather than a hidden one. (1)Eastern Orthodox doctrine and liturgy are published and studied openly, and Orthodox churches generally welcome visitors to attend services. As in Catholicism, reception of Communion is restricted to Orthodox Christians in good standing, an openly stated rule rather than a closed core. (1)Gardnerian Wicca is a three-degree initiatory tradition whose core ritual text, its Book of Shadows, is transmitted by hand copying from initiator to initiate rather than published, and practitioners are traditionally bound by oath not to disclose its specific content. General information about the tradition's history and structure is well documented by outside scholars. (1)ISKCON, the Hare Krishna movement, actively distributes its core texts, including the Bhagavad Gita As It Is, to the public as a central practice, and its temples generally welcome visitors; no closed initiatory core restricts outside description of the movement, though formal discipleship under a guru marks a deeper level of personal commitment. (1)Jehovah's Witnesses actively publish and distribute their teaching to the general public as a central practice of the faith, including door to door ministry, and hold no closed initiatory core; congregation meetings are generally open to visitors. (1)Lutheran doctrine, beginning with Martin Luther's own writings and the Book of Concord, has been published and openly debated since the sixteenth century, and Lutheran congregations generally welcome outside visitors and inquiry. (1)Methodist doctrine, beginning with John Wesley's own published sermons, and its worship practices are open and well documented, with no closed initiatory core. (1)Pentecostal worship and doctrine, including practices such as speaking in tongues, are openly practised in public services and extensively documented by outside scholars, with no closed initiatory core restricting outside description. (1)Quaker worship and practice are openly documented and meetings for worship are generally open to visitors, with no closed initiatory core; the tradition's historic testimony emphasizes plainness and transparency rather than secrecy. (1)The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publishes its scripture, including the Book of Mormon, and most of its teaching openly. Its temple ordinances are the documented exception: entry to a temple to perform or receive these ordinances requires a temple recommend issued only to members in good standing, and participants covenant not to reveal the ceremonies' specific content to outsiders. (1)The Oriental Orthodox communion's doctrine, liturgy and history are documented and published openly, and its churches, including the Coptic, Armenian, Syriac and Ethiopian traditions, are studied extensively by outside scholars. No closed initiatory core is documented for the family of churches as a whole. (1)Twelver Shia scripture, jurisprudence and the sayings of the Imams are extensively published and studied academically, with no closed initiatory core in mainstream Twelver practice; Shia shrines and mosques generally welcome visitors. (1)Practice Status DetailAllThe main Kharijite line was destroyed by the 9th century; Ibadism, its sole surviving moderate branch, continues today chiefly in Oman, Zanzibar, the Mzab valley of Algeria, Jerba in Tunisia and the Nafusa mountains of Libya (1)Very nearly extinct. One community remains, at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. (1)Principle of WorshipAllNormative (3)Regulative (1)Relation to the StateAllDisestablished (4)Established (3)No Establishment (11)Privileged Never Established (8)Varies by Province (12)Response Policy AdoptedAllDallas Charter (2002, United States) and Vos Estis Lux Mundi (2019, worldwide) (1)Following the Charity Commission's findings, the Manchester New Moston Congregation changed its child safeguarding procedures so that a victim giving evidence to an internal disciplinary hearing is no longer required to repeat allegations in the accused's presence, and it strengthened enforcement of restrictions placed on individuals under investigation. Scoped to this one congregation's own adopted changes, not a global Jehovah's Witnesses policy: the organisation has no single central authority comparable to a diocese that could adopt one on every congregation's behalf. (1)German Bishops' Conference post-MHG reforms: revised prevention and abuse-handling order (2019/2020) and the reformed recognition payment procedure through the independent UKA commission (2020/2021), up to 50,000 euros per case (1)Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct Policy (2000, revised 2022): zero tolerance standard, independent confidential hotline (1)ISKCON's Governing Body Commission formed a Task Force on Child Abuse in 1997, adopted its proposals as policy at the 1998 Mayapur meetings, began Child Protection Office operations on 1 April 1998, and adopted a further Child Protection Policy and Procedure Guideline in 2005. (1)Policy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, one of the diaspora archdioceses under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople: put into effect in 2000 by the Holy Eparchial Synod, revised June 2022 to a stated zero tolerance standard applying across the Archdiocese and its related entities, missions and institutions, with an independent confidential hotline added. (1)The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operates a help line that local leaders are directed to contact when they learn of abuse, which the church says exists to ensure compliance with legal reporting requirements and to give leaders access to expert direction on whether and how to report to civil authorities, addressing stopping the abuse, caring for the victim, and meeting reporting obligations even where clergy penitent privilege applies. A 2022 Associated Press investigation, built from sealed court records in a related Arizona civil case, gave a differing account of how the help line functioned in one specific case, in which the church disputes the AP's characterization as seriously mischaracterized and oversimplified. (1)The church's Definitions and Guidelines for Discipline, dated December 2014, names the sexual abuse of another and the misuse of the pastoral relationship for sexual activity as conduct incompatible with the character of the ministerial office, grounds for formal discipline of a rostered minister that can include removal from the roster. (1)Title IV of the Church's Constitution and Canons governs clergy discipline for sexual misconduct, with a graduated statute of limitations by offense and none at all for the sexual abuse of a child. Every diocese maintains an Intake Officer to receive complaints under the process. (1)Rule Established or Last ChangedAll1838-07-08 (1)2000-01-01 (1)2007-11-28 (1)2010-10-24 (1)2019-01-01 (1)Sacraments or OrdinancesAllBaptism and the Lord's Supper are ordinances, acts of obedience and remembrance, and are not held to convey grace. (2)Baptism, the Lord's Supper and foot washing are signs of a covenant already entered rather than sacraments conveying grace. (1)Sacraments RecognisedAllTwo (4)Schools and Universities OperatedAllThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' own Newsroom states that worldwide enrollment in the Church's Seminaries and Institutes of Religion program, which offers religion classes to high school and college-age students, exceeds 1 million students, including more than 85,000 students of other faiths. The article does not state a total count of seminary or institute locations, and does not cover the Church's separately operated Brigham Young University campuses. (1)The same Fides dossier reports that the Catholic Church runs 74,550 kindergartens with 7,639,051 pupils, 102,455 primary schools with 36,199,844 pupils, and 52,085 secondary schools with 20,724,361 pupils worldwide, as of 31 December 2023. A further 4,468,875 students attend university institutes affiliated with the Catholic Church, and 2,688,615 pupils attend Catholic-affiliated senior secondary institutes counted separately from the main secondary-school total. (1)Separation or DivergenceAll"Protestantism" is a collective term for the bodies that resulted and not itself an organised church (1)American Presbyterians divided over slavery and the federal union in 1861, when southern presbyteries, unwilling to accept the Gardiner Spring Resolutions' requirement of loyalty to the United States government, seceded to form what became the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). The PCUS reunited with the northern United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) on 10 June 1983, forming the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). This is a distinct rupture from the 1837/38 Old School-New School division, which was substantially theological and revivalist rather than a division over slavery, and from that division's own 1869 northern reunion. (1)Autocephaly abolished by Russian imperial authorities after the 1801 to 1810 annexation of Georgia (1)Ceased to be the state church of Sweden on 1 January 2000 (1)Chalcedonian bodies long called them "Monophysite", a name they reject (1)Constantinople and the eastern churches: the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the estrangement completed by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 (1)Did not accept the two nature christology defined at the Council of Chalcedon (1)Disestablished by act of parliament with effect from 1871 (1)Each holds that it kept the faith of the undivided church (2)Each tradition regards the other as the departure, and neither describes itself as having left (1)Ecumenical Patriarchate recognition of Romanian autocephaly following political independence (1)Formed by a three way merger in 1988; a minority left after the 2009 decision on partnered gay clergy (1)Friends rejected an ordained ministry and a set liturgy altogether, and were prosecuted under the Restoration (1)Gardnerian Wicca, whose material Alex Sanders used and adapted (1)Granted autocephaly from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church by Coptic Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, following Eritrean independence (1)Ibadis distinguish themselves sharply from the militant groups of that secession and reject the name "Khariji" applied to them by others (1)ISKCON is a distinct institution rather than a doctrinal separation from Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and its lineage claim is recognised by some Gaudiya bodies and questioned by others (1)Its independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, then in exile at Nicaea, was secured by Saint Sava in 1219; it was raised to a Patriarchate in 1346, repeatedly abolished and restored under Ottoman rule, and fully restored in 1920. (1)Its independence from the jurisdiction of Antioch was affirmed by the Council of Ephesus in 431, on the ground that Cyprus had been evangelised by Barnabas. (1)John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City, over segregated seating and the refusal to ordain Black preachers (1)Joint declarations from 1971 onward have found the christological difference to be one of formula rather than of faith (1)Karbala in 680 hardened the division (1)Later separations from the established Church of Scotland, in 1733 and 1843, divided Presbyterians among themselves (1)Merged in 2004 into the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and ceased to exist separately (1)Neither communion accepts a description of itself as having separated (2)No separation (1)No separation is claimed (1)Organised as an independent province after the American Revolution, once clergy could no longer swear the oath of allegiance to the British Crown required of Church of England ordinands. (1)Rejection of the arbitration between Ali ibn Abi Talib and Mu'awiya after the Battle of Siffin, 657 CE (1)Rome: the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the estrangement completed by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 (1)Russian bishops consecrated their own Metropolitan without Constantinople's approval, effective self-governance (1)Separate bodies formed between 1906 and 1914 (1)St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, over segregated seating and worship (1)Stone's Christians separated from Presbyterianism in 1804; the Campbells' Disciples separated from the Baptists over creeds and church authority in the late 1820s (1)Succession crisis following the 1844 death of Joseph Smith; rejection of Brigham Young's leadership and of plural marriage (1)The 1653 Coonan Cross Oath, in which much of the community swore never again to submit to Portuguese Jesuit authority (1)The Adventist and Bible Student milieu of the later nineteenth century (1)The Alexandrian see was divided thereafter between a Coptic and a Chalcedonian patriarchate (1)The Amish separated from the Swiss Mennonites in 1693 (1)The atlas records where the entry sits without adjudicating the question (1)The Bible Students themselves divided between 1917 and 1931, and several bodies descend from that division (1)The camp of Ali, in the secession that followed the arbitration at Siffin in 657 (1)The Church of England and the Puritan sects of the Commonwealth (1)The Church of England holds that it remained the same church under reformed government (1)The Church of England's sixteenth century separation from Rome during the English Reformation; the Communion itself was formally organised as a fellowship of the resulting churches from 1867. (1)The Church of England, by way of English Separatism: Smyth's exile congregation at Amsterdam adopted believers' baptism in 1609. (1)The Church of England, in stages: Methodism began as a society within it, and separated after Wesley's ordinations for America in 1784 and the Plan of Pacification of 1795 (1)The Congregational churches of New England, in which Eddy was raised. (1)The Disciples of Christ, over the use of instrumental music in worship and centralized missionary societies, formalized in the 1906 United States religious census (1)The earliest of the modern Wiccan lineages, and the one from which most others descend or borrow (1)The excommunications were lifted by both sides in 1965 (2)The Gaudiya Math, from which Prabhupada came (1)The Great Schism of 1054 with the Latin Church of Rome, following centuries of growing estrangement over the Filioque, papal authority and liturgical practice. (1)The Holiness movement within Methodism, over the doctrine that speaking in tongues is the evidence of Spirit baptism (1)The Hussite reform movement's moderate wing, over the Brethren's stricter, more separatist reading of Petr Chelcicky's teaching (1)The imperial church, with the other Oriental Orthodox churches, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (1)The imperial church: the Council of Chalcedon in 451, whose definition of two natures these churches did not receive (1)The Kizilbas communities were distinguished from Ottoman Sunnism from the sixteenth century (1)The Lutheran reformers held that they were reforming the western church rather than leaving it (1)The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, organized with that church's cooperation rather than by walkout (1)The Methodist Episcopal Church, which expelled Roberts in 1858 amid disputes over pew rents, women's ministry, and revivalism (1)The Millerite movement, after the expected advent failed in 1844 (1)The movement held that the apostolic church had been lost and was being restored, which is a claim of discontinuity with all of them rather than of reform within one (1)The mutual excommunications of Rome and Constantinople in 1054, hardened by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 (1)The name "Monophysite" applied to it by others is rejected by the church itself (1)The National Baptist Convention, over incorporation and control of the National Baptist Publishing Board (1)The National Baptist Convention, USA, over resistance to officer term limits and to the civil rights movement (1)The Protestant denominations of the American frontier (1)The Reformed churches were organised separately from the 1530s and confessionally defined by the 1560s (1)The rest of the Shia: the division of 765 over the succession to Jafar al-Sadiq, between those who recognised his son Ismail and his line and those who recognised his son Musa al-Kazim, from whom the Twelver line runs. (1)The Roman church, in the Scottish Reformation of 1560 (1)The Roman church, in the sixteenth-century Reformation (1)The Roman church, within the wider Reformation (1)The Roman church: from Luther's excommunication and the Diet of Worms in 1521 to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 (1)The Roman church: the Act of Supremacy of 1534 ended papal jurisdiction in England, and the settlement of 1559 with the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 defined the separation doctrinally (1)The sabbatarian Adventists organised separately and took the name in 1863 (1)The Shia position is that leadership was designated to Ali ibn Abi Talib and his descendants (1)The Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 in an explicit split from northern Baptists after the American Baptist Home Mission Society refused to commission a missionary who owned slaves; the new convention was founded to defend the right of slaveholders to serve as missionaries. It formally apologized for that origin in a resolution adopted 20 to 22 June 1995, on its 150th anniversary. (1)The Sunni hold that the community's choice of Abu Bakr in 632 was legitimate (1)The two lines remain close enough that some covens work both (1)The United Methodist Church, over same-sex marriage and the ordination of non-celibate gay clergy. The Wesleyan doctrinal standards were carried over intact: what divided the two bodies was sexuality and the ordering of the episcopacy, not the Articles of Religion. (1)The Zurich and Dutch reformations, as part of the Anabaptist movement (1)The Zurich reformation under Zwingli: the first believers' baptisms of January 1525 followed the city council's refusal to abolish infant baptism. (1)Unilateral declaration of autocephaly in 1833; recognised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1850 (1)Wesley died an Anglican priest and denied that he had left (1)Whether Alevism is a branch of Islam, a distinct religion, or a syncretic tradition is disputed among Alevis themselves and between Alevis and Sunni authorities (1)Settlement TotalAll500,000 (1)995,000 (1)4,016,152.39 (1)9,500,000 (1)1,500,000,000 (1)5,590,000,000 (1)Sexuality Position DetailAllAdopted by the Jubilee Bishops' Council, 13 to 16 August 2000, Section XII.9 of the Basis of the Social Concept states that Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church unequivocally deplore homosexual relations, citing Leviticus 20:13 and Romans 1:26 to 27, and that the divinely established marital union of man and woman cannot be compared to what the document calls perverted manifestations of sexuality. It directs pastoral responsibility toward people with homosexual inclinations while opposing any presentation of the tendency as a norm, and bars a person promoting homosexuality from working with children or youth or holding military or reformatory positions. (1)Anglicanism is held together by communion rather than by one governing body, and its own largest and most closely watched provinces read at nearly every point on this question today. The Episcopal Church in the United States removed its own ordination bar with Resolution D025 in 2009, authorized same-sex marriage rites in 2015 through Resolutions A036 and A054, and closed the remaining gap in 2018 when Resolution B012 took effect, guaranteeing every couple access to the marriage rites regardless of a local diocesan bishop's own objection. The Church of England moved more cautiously: its General Synod voted on 9 February 2023 to endorse the bishops' decision not to propose any change to the doctrine of marriage, while from 17 December 2023 permitting priests to use the Prayers of Love and Faith to offer a blessing, in regular public worship, to a same-sex couple who have marked a civil marriage or civil partnership, a distinct step short of either ordaining partnered clergy on that basis or performing the marriage itself. At the level of the wider Anglican Communion, the Lambeth Conference's 2022 Call on Human Dignity, revised by its own drafters that July, moved away from reaffirming the 1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10 against same-sex marriage and toward language recognizing that the Communion's forty-two provinces hold no single position, some continuing to recognize only opposite-sex marriage and others having moved toward blessing or performing same-sex marriage after their own process of theological reflection. No single statement speaks for Anglicanism as a whole. (1)As Armenia's National Assembly considered amendments to the domestic violence prevention law in April 2024, the Legal Advisory Committee of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the Armenian Apostolic Church's central see, stated on its own site on 9 April 2024 that the amendments' definition of "partner" did not exclude same-gender persons from being considered partners whose union would in fact be equated with the concept of family. The committee declared the initiative unacceptable, stating that the family is the union of love between a man and a woman, united in God's will, and that the traditional understanding of family is ontologically important to the nation and cannot be negotiable. Independent reporting on 12 April 2024 described the reaction as sharply negative and quoted the church that the traditional understanding of family cannot be a subject of bargaining for the nation. Parliament adopted the amendments regardless, 57 votes to 25 with one abstention. No source found addresses ordinary church membership for a gay member. (1)As the Greek government prepared a bill to legalize civil same-sex marriage and adoption, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, the autocephalous national church of the Greek state under its own governance since 1850, met on 23 January 2024 and stated unanimously that the duality of the sexes and their complementarity are not social inventions but come from God, and that Christian marriage is a holy sacrament through which the grace of God is granted to the union of a man and a woman, not a simple cohabitation agreement. Its spokesman, Metropolitan Bishop Panteleimon, told reporters plainly that the church says marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that is the source of life. Parliament passed the bill on 16 February 2024 despite the church's stated opposition, making Greece the first majority Orthodox nation to legalize civil same-sex marriage. No source found addresses whether the church withdraws ordinary membership from a gay member; both accounts read address the civil law and the sacrament of marriage. (1)As the Greek parliament debated a bill to legalize civil same-sex marriage, the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the first see of the Eastern Orthodox communion, stated on 24 January 2024 that the church does not accept for its members unions of same or opposite-sex couples or any other form of union apart from sacramental marriage between a man and a woman, reaffirming the 2016 Holy and Great Council of Crete's teaching that marriage is the union of man and woman in Christ. The Synod added that the church must respond to members already in such unions with pastoral responsibility and love in Christ, addressing them as continuing members of the church rather than as excluded from it. Greece became the first majority Orthodox nation to legalize civil same-sex marriage weeks later, in February 2024, despite the church's stated opposition. (1)At its 2013 General Assembly the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) voted to affirm and welcome LGBTQ plus people in all aspects of church life, including leadership, encouraging congregations to become more inclusive while leaving individual congregations and regions autonomous over their own ordination and marriage decisions. Several regions and many congregations now ordain LGBTQ plus clergy, and following the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision the general minister and president confirmed that ministers whose consciences call for it may conduct weddings for couples regardless of sexual orientation. (1)Baptist church government is congregational, and no national body speaks with binding authority for the whole family, yet its three largest American conventions read the same way rather than spreading across the range. The Southern Baptist Convention's confessional statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, names homosexuality among the forms of sexual immorality Christians should oppose, alongside adultery and pornography, but neither the confession nor the Convention's 2015 marriage resolution sets out a formal bar on an LGBT individual's ordinary church membership, and practice on that question varies by autonomous local congregation. American Baptist Churches USA's General Board amended its own statement of identity, We Are American Baptists, in November 2005 to hold that Scripture places sexual intimacy within marriage between one man and one woman and that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with biblical teaching, while the denomination's own published caveat states that no national resolution or policy statement obligates any congregation or region to a particular position. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated's president stated in 2012 that the Convention affirms marriage as a sacred biblical covenant between a man and a woman while explicitly disclaiming any power to dictate that position to its autonomous constituent churches, and in January 2014 the Convention directed its own endorsed military chaplains not to participate in any activity implying or condoning a same-sex marriage or union, an officiant-level restriction distinct from a membership bar. No source read across any of the three states that an LGBT individual is denied ordinary church membership at the national level. (1)Because there is no central authority that speaks for all Quakers, Friends exhibit significant variation in how they interpret their tradition on sexual orientation, best analysed meeting by meeting rather than as one denomination. Britain Yearly Meeting formally supported same-sex marriage in 2009, Australia Yearly Meeting in January 2010, and Canadian Yearly Meeting affirmed in August 2003 that a same-sex relationship is equal in value to an opposite-sex one, while Central Yearly Meeting of Friends, Friends United Meeting and Evangelical Friends Church International hold same-sex relationships to be sinful. None of the three major United States associations of Friends has made a statement affirming marriage equality. Friends have no formal ordination process, so the usual distinction between membership, blessing and ordination does not map cleanly onto Quaker practice. (1)Bishop Matthew Thomas' 20 December 2016 statement for the Study Commission on Doctrine states: homosexual behavior cannot be seen as part of God's intended role for human sexual expression, regardless of a person's attraction. We will not accord same-sex relationships the status the church holds for God's intended design for marriage and intimacy. We will not, in other words, perform same sex unions or marriages. The church receives into membership only those who have received Christ's forgiveness and redemption, are committed to a life of growing discipleship, acknowledge God's pattern of health for the believer and commit to live out the membership covenant of the Free Methodist Church, without a separate stated rule naming sexual orientation as its own bar to that covenant. (1)Churches of Christ has no central governing body; congregations are independently autonomous, so no single national statement exists. Reporting by a publication serving the movement, drawing on named leaders across several congregations, finds a broadly shared teaching that God reserves sexual intimacy for marriage between a man and a woman and that homosexual practice is sin, held alongside an emphasis on showing compassion rather than condemnation toward a person who experiences same-sex attraction. Several congregations described in the reporting maintain counseling and support structures aimed specifically at helping a member refrain from acting on the attraction, treating the attraction itself and the practice as morally distinct. No account read states that an openly gay or lesbian member in an active same-sex relationship retains ordinary membership on the same terms as other members. (1)Doctrine and Covenants Section 164 states "God, the Creator of all, ultimately is concerned about behaviors and relationships that uphold the worth and giftedness of all people," rooted in "Christ-like love, mutual respect, responsibility, justice, covenant, and faithfulness." KCUR reports that the USA National Conference, 19 to 21 April 2013, voted "to extend the sacrament of marriage to people in same-gender relationships in states where it's legal" and to provide "opportunities for ordination of a person in a long-term, such as marriage or covenant, relationship" to be ordained, tracing the reconsideration back to requests raised at the 2010 World Conference. (1)Eastern Orthodoxy teaches marriage as a sacrament reserved to one man and one woman, and holds that same-sex sexual relationships fall outside the bounds of chaste conduct; the Church does not perform or bless same-sex unions and does not ordain a member living openly in a same-sex relationship. This is continuous doctrine with no single adoption date, expressed consistently across at least four decades of documented statements from separate Orthodox jurisdictions and publications, most recently the Orthodox Church in America Holy Synod's 2022 statement, which also affirms pastoral care and love for those who experience same-sex attraction. LGBT individuals are not excluded from membership or participation in the life of the Church on that basis alone. (1)In August 2003 Bishop Richard Franklin Norris stated the official position of the church is not in favour of ordaining an openly gay person to the clergy. At its July 2004 national convention delegates voted unanimously to bar clergy from performing or blessing any ceremony for a same-sex couple, the first such vote by a predominantly African American denomination, the Reverend Gregory G. Groover Senior explaining that the church's first call is to hear the voice of God in Scripture. The Book of Discipline states plainly that unions of any kind between persons of the same sex or gender are contrary to the will of God. The General Conference vote of 28 August 2024, 896 to 722, retained the ban after a Sexual Ethics Discernment Committee had recommended repealing it, the committee authorised to continue its work toward the next General Conference. (1)Iran's Islamic Penal Code, based on the state's official Twelver Ja'fari school, defines liwat as penetrative anal intercourse between men. Article 234 sets the hadd punishment, a fixed, divinely mandated penalty under Islamic legal classification leaving a judge no discretion once the evidentiary bar is met, as death for the receptive party in every case, and for the insertive party where force or coercion was used, or where the status of ihsan (marriage to a permanent wife) applies; otherwise one hundred lashes. A related act, tafkhiz, carries one hundred lashes under Article 236, escalating to death under specified conditions. Documented enforcement includes executions in 2021 and 2022 and continuing prosecutions. (1)jw.org states "God created humans to engage in sex only within the arrangement of marriage between a male and a female" (Genesis 1:27, 28) and that "the Bible condemns sexual activity that is not between a husband and wife, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual conduct" (1 Corinthians 6:18). It adds "while the Bible disapproves of homosexual acts," it "does not condone hatred of homosexuals or homophobia," directing Christians to "respect everyone" (1 Peter 2:17), and counsels a person experiencing same-sex attraction toward the same self-control expected of an unmarried heterosexual person (Colossians 3:5). (1)Mennonite World Conference is a global communion of roughly 110 autonomous national and regional Anabaptist related member churches with no single teaching authority over them on this question. Its own General Secretary, Cesar Garcia, states that MWC itself takes no position on same-sex marriage and that only about four of its member churches hold a progressive stance, Mennonite Church USA among them, whose delegates voted in May 2022 to repeal a twenty-year guideline barring pastors from officiating same-sex marriages while leaving the denomination's own confession of faith, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman, formally unchanged. Meserete Kristos Church in Ethiopia, the largest Anabaptist body in the communion with over 514,000 baptized members, withdrew as host of the 2028 MWC world assembly in November 2025, its executive committee stating that associating with a conference including churches supporting homosexuality contradicts the core beliefs of its church. (1)Methodism traces to the revival led by John Wesley and his brother Charles within eighteenth-century Anglicanism, and it has never held one worldwide teaching authority on this question; independently governed bodies within the same tradition read at opposite ends of it today. The United Methodist Church's 2024 General Conference repealed its longstanding ban on the ordination of gay clergy and on clergy officiating same-sex weddings. The Free Methodist Church's Study Commission on Doctrine and the Wesleyan Church's own Discipline both hold that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church retains a ban on same-sex marriage among its clergy and congregations while continuing to welcome LGBTQ people as members. No single statement speaks for Methodism as a whole on this question, a structural absence rather than a live vote still pending. (1)On 17 October 2012 the Annual Council of the General Conference Executive Committee, meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland, voted "Seventh-day Adventist Response to Same-Sex Unions, A Reaffirmation of Christian Marriage" by hand vote of more than 200 pastors, lay people and denominational workers. The statement reaffirms marriage as "a lifelong union between a man and a woman," states the celebration of same-sex unions is not sanctioned by the Church, and pairs that restriction with an explicit statement that "all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are loved by God" and a call to "living a life of Christ-like compassion and faithfulness." (1)On 22 October 2009 the Church of Sweden's General Synod voted, 176 of 249 voting members in favour, to let priests perform marriages, using that word, for same-sex couples from 1 November 2009, aligned with civil marriage legislation in force since 1 May 2009 and extending a blessing-only practice the church had offered since 2007. Individual priests remained free to decline to perform such a ceremony. On 8 November 2009, weeks after the vote, Eva Brunne was consecrated Bishop of Stockholm at Uppsala Cathedral, reported as the country's first openly homosexual bishop, in a civil union partnership with another woman and together raising a three year old child. (1)Presbyterianism is governed by no single worldwide body, and its largest American bodies read at nearly every point on this question today. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) removed the "fidelity and chastity" ordination standard that had barred partnered gay and lesbian officers from 1996 through Amendment 10-A's effective date of 10 July 2011, and in 2015 amended its Book of Order to permit, though not require, its pastors to officiate at same-sex weddings. The Presbyterian Church in America moved the opposite direction: its 51st General Assembly in 2024 gave final approval to Overture 23, already ratified 76 to 2 by its own 88 presbyteries in the 2023-2024 interim, adding a Book of Church Order criterion that bars from ordained office any man who describes himself with identity language such as "gay Christian," "same-sex attracted Christian" or "homosexual Christian," regardless of celibacy. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church sits between the two: its General Assembly adopted a Position Paper on Human Sexuality in 2017 confining sexual expression to celibacy outside marriage or to marriage between a man and a woman, and its 2024 General Assembly, described by one denominational historian as the most contentious he had witnessed, opened a two-year study running through 2026 on whether a celibate man who identifies as gay may hold pastoral office, a question its own commissioners left unresolved. No single statement speaks for Presbyterianism as a whole. (1)Resolution 317, "Action and Public Statements of Hridayananda Das Goswami," passed at the GBC's Annual General Meeting, Sri Mayapur Dham, 12 to 23 February 2009, states: "The GBC has carefully reviewed the recent action (giving blessings) and the public statements of Hridayananda Maharaja concerning homosexuality," concluding they "remain controversial and divisive in ISKCON" and that the GBC does not endorse or support them. The resolution followed a same-sex couple's commitment ceremony in California in November 2008 at which Hridayananda Das Goswami had given a blessing. (1)Since 4 April 2019, the Church treats a member's same-gender marriage as a serious transgression rather than as automatic apostasy, and no longer requires a mandatory disciplinary council for it; children of LGBT parents may again be named, blessed and baptized without First Presidency approval. Doctrinally the Church has not changed its teaching that same-sex sexual relationships and marriage are contrary to the plan of salvation; ordination to the priesthood and full temple participation remain unavailable to a member in a same-sex relationship, and the Church does not perform or bless same-sex marriages. From 5 November 2015 to 4 April 2019, the stricter "November Policy" classified a member's same-gender marriage as apostasy outright and restricted the naming, blessing and baptism of a same-gender couple's children, as detailed in the history record on this fact. (1)Since the 2009 Churchwide Assembly vote of 21 August 2009 (559 to 451), the ELCA ordains and rosters clergy living in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships on equal terms with other clergy, ordaining its first such clergy in 2010. The Churchwide Assembly has never taken a separate, churchwide vote defining or authorizing same-sex marriage as such; instead it grants individual ministers and congregations the freedom to recognize, support and solemnize such relationships, which is why same-sex marriages are performed at many, though not all, ELCA congregations. Before 2009, clergy in a same-gender relationship were required to remain celibate to serve. (1)The 2003 declaration quotes First Corinthians 6:9 to 10, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites will inherit the Kingdom of God, and states the clergy strongly condemns such activities. It quotes Mark 10:6 to 7, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and states the church disapproves of same-sex unions as contrary to the divine design for marriage and its purpose of procreation. It states: we disapprove of and condemn the ordination of homosexual clergy, active or not, and invites those under this sin to repent out of concern for their eternal life. (1)The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church's Board of Bishops met for its quadrennial conference in Washington, D.C. in July 1996 and issued a message read to about 1,000 delegates and visitors, reported as the denomination's definitive statement of policy and direction. The bishops declared homosexuality and same-sex marriages morally wrong, while stating plainly that the church's position has been, and continues to be, clear on not condemning any of God's children, and that it is the practice of homosexuality, not the person, that must be condemned. No source found addresses ordinary church membership for a gay member directly beyond that distinction. (1)The Catechism states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law" (2357), while it also states of the inclination itself that persons "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity" and that "every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided" (2358). Homosexual persons are called to chastity like every unmarried Catholic (2359). The Church does not ordain on the basis of the inclination and does not celebrate a same-sex union as a marriage; the teaching's own framing distinguishes the inclination and the person, who is owed welcome, from the act, which is held contrary to teaching. (1)The Episcopal Church reached its current position in three stages. Resolution 2009-D025 affirmed that ordained ministry, at every level, is open to gay and lesbian individuals, ending an informal moratorium the church had observed since 2006. Resolutions A036 and A054, adopted 1 July 2015, revised the marriage canon to remove its definition of marriage as between a man and a woman and authorized two gender-neutral marriage rites for trial use, but access still depended on the consent of the local diocesan bishop, so a handful of dioceses did not make the rites available. Resolution B012 closed that gap: passed 13 July 2018 and effective 2 December 2018, it guarantees every couple access to the marriage rites everywhere in the denomination, providing that a couple in a diocese whose bishop objects on theological grounds may be married by their own priest under another bishop's pastoral oversight. No clergy member is compelled to officiate at any wedding. (1)The Global Methodist Church's Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline, paragraph 202, states as the seventh of fourteen numbered statements: "We believe that human sexuality is a gift of God that is to be affirmed as it is exercised within the legal and spiritual covenant of a loving and monogamous marriage between one man and one woman." The denomination launched 1 May 2022 when clergy and congregations left the United Methodist Church specifically over that church's move toward ordaining non-celibate gay clergy and permitting clergy to perform same-sex marriages. The same paragraph frames the teaching beside an explicit welcome, committing the church to being "a safe place of refuge, hospitality, and healing for any who may have experienced brokenness in their sexual lives." (1)The Moravian Church (Unitas Fratrum) is organised into some twenty-four self-governing provinces, each with its own Provincial Synod, under a Unity Synod that meets every seven years to decide doctrine and guidelines for the whole church; the church allows each province to issue its own ruling on same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ plus clergy. The Eastern West Indies Province's 2009 Resolution 16 re-affirms loving the sinner while standing in opposition to all sin, and resolves in opposition to the ordination of known or practicing homosexuals and to the marriage of persons of the same sex. The Northern Province's 2014 synod voted to permit the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy regardless of marital status and called for a rite to solemnise same-sex marriage. The Southern Province's 2018 synod affirmed by resolution, 116 to 63, that it was the decision of pastors within their own congregations whether to perform a same-sex marriage. (1)The Progressive National Baptist Convention, a historically Black Baptist denomination founded in 1961 and organized on Baptist principles of congregational autonomy, has taken no denominational stand on homosexuality or same-sex unions, leaving the question to each member congregation. This differs from the National Baptist Convention USA Incorporated, the nation's largest predominantly Black denomination, and from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, both of which forbid clergy from officiating at ceremonies for same-sex couples. Covenant Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., a Progressive National Baptist Convention member congregation, performed same-sex union ceremonies for its own members under that congregational autonomy, reported in 2007, with its co-pastors having preached for years that homosexuality is not a sin. No single statement speaks for the convention as a whole. (1)The revised Lambeth Call on Human Dignity, reported 26 July 2022, moved away from seeking a reaffirmation of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10, which had declared homosexual practice incompatible with Scripture, toward language stating there is no consensus across all forty-two of the Anglican Communion's provinces on the legitimacy of blessings and marriage rites for same-sex couples. The Call states all baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ, while the bishops stated they remain committed to listening and walking together to the maximum possible degree, despite their deep disagreement on these issues. (1)Standard Rate ExpectedAllTen percent. (7)Twenty percent. (1)Standing Giving ExpectationAll"Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective," the Mennonite Church and General Conference Mennonite Church's own 1995 joint confessional statement, Article 21, "Christian Stewardship," states: "As stewards of money and possessions, we are to live simply, practice mutual aid within the church, uphold economic justice, and give generously and cheerfully." No tithe or fixed percentage is named anywhere in the article; the confessional standard is mutual aid, congregation members meeting one another's losses and hardships directly, historically expressed through practices such as door-to-door offerings for a member's medical bill and, since 1945, the church-founded mutual aid organization now known as Everence, rather than a percentage-of-income rule. Historically, seventeenth-century Swiss Brethren congregations asked applicants for membership whether they were willing "to devote all their possessions to the church and its needs, if a need became known and if they were able to render aid," the root of the present mutual aid emphasis; that historical vow is recorded for context and is not the confession's own current wording. (1)Baptist polity sets no single Baptist-wide giving rule, because local church autonomy is the tradition's own defining principle rather than an incidental feature. Baptist denominational bodies, associations, state and national conventions, hold no authority over a local Baptist church; a Baptist congregation itself selects its own leadership, decides its own financial matters and directs its own affairs without outside control. The Southern Baptist Convention's own 1992 resolution on the subject states that general Baptist bodies, the Convention itself included, are "fully autonomous, each 'independent in its own sphere,' and thus beyond the coercion of any other body or local church." The range this leaves is real rather than a description in the abstract: the American Baptist Churches USA and the Southern Baptist Convention both merely preach a voluntary tithe with no consequence, while the Progressive National Baptist Convention operates a genuinely different, codified due, a member congregation must pay at least one percent of its operating receipts to the Convention to keep its own voting rights. No Baptist-wide body could set a single member-giving rule even if it wished to; none holds the authority to. (1)Canon 222 of the Code of Canon Law, restated as the fifth of the Precepts of the Church ("you shall help to provide for the needs of the Church"), obliges Catholics to support the material needs of the Church according to their own ability. It names no fixed percentage: the Church rarely exercises its right to require a specific amount, leaving each Catholic to judge how and when to give through Sunday collections, annual appeals and other ordinary means. The widely known figure of ten percent is a homiletic tradition borrowed from tithing, not a requirement of canon law itself. (1)Churches of Christ hold no central governing body able to set a shared giving rule: congregational autonomy is the tradition's own defining principle, and each congregation is a network participant at its own discretion in fellowship and shared causes with other congregations rather than under any outside financial authority. No tithe or fixed percentage binds a member across the movement as a whole. (1)Community of Christ reframed its own tithing practice in 2002 under a program it named Disciples' Generous Response, replacing an older calculation based on a member's net increase in income with a broader theology of generous giving in response to God's abundance, under which charitable donations beyond the church itself can be counted as tithing through what the church calls community tithes. No fixed calculation or penalty for falling short survived the reframing. (1)Eastern Orthodoxy asks its members to give as an expression of stewardship and thanksgiving, but no Orthodox jurisdiction has issued a decree fixing a tithe or any other percentage. The Orthodox Church in America's own guidance states plainly that it has never mandated a tithe, and that stewardship materials mentioning the traditional ten percent figure hold it up only as an ideal benchmark, teaching that the percentage itself matters less than giving one's first and best out of thanksgiving. Parishes are in practice supported through stewardship pledges, festival fundraisers and free-will offerings rather than a billed rate, so this is deliberately not recorded as an explicit absence like the Jehovah's Witnesses' entry: a real giving expectation exists, it simply carries no fixed rate. (1)Global Lutheranism sets no single member-giving rule, and nothing above the denominational level has the standing to set one. The Lutheran World Federation, founded at Lund in 1947 and counting 154 member church bodies in 99 countries as of 2023, describes itself as a global communion of national and regional Lutheran denominations, coordinating shared work in ecumenical relations, theology and humanitarian aid rather than governing member churches' own internal practice. The divergence this leaves is well documented rather than merely inferred: the Church of Sweden's kyrkoavgift is a real, tax-withheld, mandatory membership fee with a genuine consequence for nonpayment, while the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's own stewardship materials describe giving as a voluntary response to grace carrying no adopted percentage or churchwide resolution, a customary expectation rather than an enforced one. A single Lutheranism-wide rule would have to hold across both of those bodies at once, and none does. (1)ISKCON's own Governing Body Commission describes its temples as financially independent under the Commission's ecclesiastical management, tracing that arrangement to Srila Prabhupada's own founding directions rather than to a churchwide giving quota. At the congregational level no fixed percentage or mandatory rate is set for an ordinary devotee; a temple's own donation policy states that the temple respects a donor's decision to give as inspired by the Lord, and describes undesignated gifts, those given without any stipulation from the donor, as the majority of what funds day to day temple life. Individual temples separately run optional life membership and patron programs, one time contributions made in exchange for continuing access and recognition rather than an ongoing obligation, and the amounts asked for these vary by temple rather than being fixed centrally. (1)Jehovah's Witnesses' own published teaching addresses the question directly: "No, Jehovah's Witnesses do not practice tithing; our work is financed by voluntary donations," explaining that the Mosaic Law's tithing commandment, including the "commandment to collect tithes," does not apply to Christians, and that the organization instead follows the instruction that "each one do just as he has resolved in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). A companion FAQ page states plainly that "Jehovah's Witnesses are not expected to tithe or to donate any specific amount or percentage of their income," and that the organization never takes a collection or charges admission at a meeting, nor do its ministers charge fees for baptisms, funerals or weddings; giving instead takes the form of contribution boxes placed in Kingdom Halls, and donor information "is never shared or made available to the public." This is a documented, doctrinally reasoned absence of a fixed giving rule rather than an unresearched gap: the organization states its position directly, repeatedly and in its own words across its own published materials. (1)Like the Southern Baptist Convention, the Progressive National Baptist Convention sets no denomination-wide required percentage on an individual lay member; ordinary tithing teaching inside PNBC congregations follows the same preached, congregation-autonomous pattern general to Baptist life, and the Convention's own Article IV states it "shall have no ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the churches... nor shall it interfere with the internal affairs of any church." What the PNBC does formalize, distinct from a personal member obligation and unlike the Southern Baptist Convention's voluntary Cooperative Program, is a real, mandatory, congregation-to-convention due: By-Laws Article 1, Section 1a, requires "each Baptist Church, admitted to the Convention" to "contribute to the Convention at least 1% of its operating receipts of the previous year," and ties compliance directly to a consequence: "only those members [churches] who pay 1% of their operating receipts by the end of the preceding fiscal year are eligible to be elected and hold office in the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc." Conventions, fellowships and associations owe separate flat annual sums ($500, $300 and $250 respectively) for their own voting delegates. (1)Members are expected to pay tithing, one tenth of their annual income, a law stated in Doctrine and Covenants 119 (8 July 1838). Payment is declared each year in a tithing settlement interview, and being a full tithe payer is one of the questions a member must answer to receive or renew a temple recommend, without which a member cannot enter a temple for its ordinances; the obligation therefore carries a direct, current, administrative consequence for non-payment. (1)Members of the Church of Sweden owe kyrkoavgift, a membership fee automatically withheld through the ordinary tax system; a member registered with the Church on 1 November owes the fee for the whole of the following year. The larger part of the rate is set locally by each parish council rather than nationally, so it runs from roughly 0.7 percent to just over 1 percent of taxable income depending on parish, with a national average for 2026 of about 1.05 percent. The obligation ends only when a member formally withdraws from the Church of Sweden; there is no lesser step that stops it. (1)Methodism's founding teaching on giving is John Wesley's own sermon "The Use of Money," preached from Luke 16:9 and built around three rules meant to be held together: gain all you can without harming yourself or your neighbor, save all you can by cutting off wasteful expense, and give all you can. Wesley explicitly rejected capping that duty at a fixed proportion: "Render unto God," he preached, "not a tenth, not a third, not half, but all that is God's, be it more or less." This is the shared founding ethic behind the Methodist family generally, distinct from The United Methodist Church's own narrower apportioned-giving mechanism, which is a codified congregation-to-conference due rather than Wesley's own personal-stewardship teaching. (1)Nizari Ismailis give dasond, a religious due paid to the Imam's own institutional structure and administered today through the Aga Khan, a shape parallel to the Twelver khums already recorded on this axis. A peer-reviewed 2014 study of judicial records from the Nizari Khoja community of Karachi records the rate directly: "the tithe, known as dasond, was between 10-12 per cent of the followers' earnings." The obligation carries real doctrinal weight rather than a merely customary expectation: farmans of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah (Aga Khan III), dated and named, state that "without giving dasond, one's worship ('ibadat) is not accepted" and that "one's earnings and food are only permissible (halal) after giving dasond." Unlike a fixed-name storehouse tax, funds collected as dasond and other religious dues are institutionally the Imamat's own, administered for and largely returned to the community's own religious, educational and development institutions rather than retained personally by the Imam. (1)Presbyterianism's shared confessional touchstone is the Westminster Larger Catechism, completed in 1647 and adopted by the Church of Scotland the following year, still subscribed across much of the tradition including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Its own section on the eighth commandment states the duty of giving in proportional rather than percentage terms: believers must practice "giving and lending freely, according to our abilities, and the necessities of others," naming no fixed rate and no tithe. This is the confessional teaching behind Presbyterian giving generally, distinct from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s own narrower per capita apportionment, which is a specific denominational due paid by congregations to their presbytery, synod and General Assembly rather than the wider confessional teaching on a member's own personal giving. (1)Protestantism spans traditions too different in structure and teaching to share one honest member-giving norm, and nothing above the denominational level has the standing to set one for the whole. The range across Protestantism's own major families spans a real spectrum rather than a family resemblance: Lutheranism's own split between the Church of Sweden's tax-withheld kyrkoavgift and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's fully voluntary practice; the Anglican Communion's own documented absence of any binding member rule; Pentecostal bodies' formally doctrinal ten-percent tithe; the Progressive National Baptist Convention's codified congregation-to-convention due against the Southern Baptist Convention's purely preached tithe; and Methodism's own founding rejection of any fixed proportion at all, in favor of giving without a stated limit. No Protestantism-wide governing body exists to set a shared rule, and the traditions gathered under the label disagree with each other too fundamentally, state-linked taxation against purely voluntary custom, formal doctrine against explicit rejection of any fixed rate, for one sentence to describe them honestly. (1)Quaker Faith and Practice, Britain Yearly Meeting's own book of Christian discipline, states directly at passage 11.01 that "membership also entails a financial commitment appropriate to a member's means, for without money neither the local meeting nor the wider structure can function," set alongside the wider expectation that all members share "the clergy's responsibility for the maintenance of the meeting as a community." This is a real, written obligation of formal membership rather than a customary habit or a sermon-preached ideal, but it is deliberately unquantified: the text ties giving to individual means rather than to any set percentage or fixed sum, and no source found ties non-payment to any consequence for a member's standing. (1)Seventh-day Adventists teach that a tithe, ten percent of a believer's income, is owed to God as a biblical mandate rather than a freewill offering, distinct from the additional offerings members are also encouraged to give. The church's own stewardship ministry traces a tithe dollar's route from a member's local church first to the local conference, then onward to the union, the North American Division and the General Conference, an institutional routing more structured than most Christian bodies' looser tithing preaching. No interview or standing requirement ties a member's membership to whether they in fact pay it. (1)Shaker communities required members to sign a written covenant, developed in the 1790s, under which a new member confessed their sins and consecrated both their property and their labor to the society, in addition to living celibately. By 1793, each Shaker community had made its property a single consecrated whole rather than a set of individual holdings. (1)The Anglican Communion itself sets no single member-giving rule: it "has no official legal existence nor any governing structure that might exercise authority over the member churches," and even its own Lambeth Conference resolutions "have no legal effect on the autonomous provinces of the communion." Each of the Communion's 42 autonomous provinces sets its own teaching on member giving under its own canon law and its own local primate; there is no Communion-wide tithe, percentage or due binding an ordinary member anywhere in the Communion, distinct from the tithe-as-aspiration teaching already recorded on the Church of England-led Anglicanism fact on this axis. What the Communion's own history carries instead is a call to mutual giving between churches rather than a rule for individual members: the 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress's "Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ," drafted with delegates from nearly every diocese in the Communion, asked member churches to commit to sharing resources with one another, explicitly declining to create "a new central fund" and leaving "each church to determine its own need to share in the life of other churches." This is a documented structural absence rather than an unresearched gap: the Communion's own governing description of itself, not merely a lack of evidence, is why no single member rate exists at this level. (1)The Armenian Apostolic Church distinguishes two tiers of parish membership in North American diaspora practice: baptized communicant members, who have full sacramental standing with no fee attached, and dues-paying (or "voting") members, whose annual payment is a real, fixed, published amount rather than a tithe percentage. St. Peter Armenian Apostolic Church's own membership page states: "Dues-paying members of St. Peter Armenian Apostolic Church must be at least 18 years of age and pay the Annual dues of $150 in order to be in good standing. One must be a dues-paying member to hold an elective office as well as having the privilege to vote at the Annual Parish Assembly." This is one parish's own published rule, not a pan-Armenian canonical text; the underlying two-tier communicant and dues-paying membership structure appears at other Armenian Apostolic parish websites as well, but only St. Peter's own statement was read directly and confirmed, so this fact is scoped to that parish's account rather than claimed as denomination-wide canon law. (1)The Continental Reformed tradition's confessional teaching on giving comes from the Heidelberg Catechism, adopted in the Palatinate in 1563 and still one of the Three Forms of Unity subscribed across Reformed churches including the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Dutch Reformed Church. Its own section on the eighth commandment requires that a believer "work faithfully so that I may be able to give to those in need," naming giving as a duty flowing from labor rather than a fixed rate, and separately forbids "all abuse or squandering of" God's gifts. No percentage or tithe standard appears in the catechism's own language; the obligation is proportional to ability and need rather than quota based. (1)The Coptic Orthodox Metropolis (Diocese) of the Southern United States' own published FAQ on tithing states plainly, answering whether God really wants ten percent: "No, He wants 100%, all or nothing," and adds "The minimum is 10%," citing Malachi 3:10 and Matthew 23:23. No consequence to a member's standing is named anywhere for giving less than that. The same FAQ answers at length what a member unable to afford the tithe should do: offer time, talents or service in its place, speak with a priest, and, if genuinely struggling, the parish itself might help the member rather than the reverse. It closes: "There is no need or requirement to make radical adjustments; 10% is Biblical, yes, but the decision on the amount is really yours." No pan-Coptic canonical text or catechism beyond this diocesan FAQ was located, so this fact is scoped to this diocese's own published account rather than claimed as denomination-wide canon law. (1)The Disciples Mission Fund is the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ's own common fund, through which congregations voluntarily share support divided among general, regional and educational ministries, the ministries it funds covenanting not to solicit congregations directly for more. No fixed percentage or mandatory rate binds a congregation, still less an individual member; the fund's own materials describe participation as voluntary. (1)The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople sets no tithe or percentage on an ordinary communicant. What makes it distinct from Eastern Orthodoxy generally on this axis is structural rather than doctrinal: its own local Istanbul flock, once roughly 135,000 people after the 1923 population exchange, has been reduced by the 1955 Istanbul pogrom, the 1964 expulsions and decades of legal pressure to only a few thousand today, by the account of the Patriarchate's own chartered lay order, the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. With too small a local base to support the institution through ordinary member giving, standing support instead runs through that lay order and its affiliated foundation, whose own stated purpose is not almsgiving but institutional duty: "we treat advocacy not as charity but as a duty owed to the Mother Church." No percentage or fixed due is named anywhere for an individual communicant; the obligation this body actually documents sits at the institutional, diaspora-patronage level rather than the ordinary-member level. (1)The ELCA's own official stewardship resources frame member giving as a voluntary response to grace, "Sharing God's Abundance," rather than a codified due: its stewardship page distinguishes individual giving explicitly from Mission Support, the offerings ELCA congregations, not individual members, share with synods and the churchwide organization to fund shared ministry, itself an institutional rather than a personal mechanism. No adopted percentage, tithe standard or formal churchwide assembly resolution comparable to the Episcopal Church's 1982 General Convention vote or the Church of England's repeated Synod resolutions, both already recorded here, was located. This is the genuine no-Kirchensteuer contrast case for American Lutheranism: unlike the German Catholic and Evangelical church bodies and the Nordic state churches already recorded here, giving among American Lutherans carries no tax mechanism, no adopted numeric standard and no institutional voice urging a specific rate; it is a personal spiritual practice left to individual conscience and custom. (1)The Episcopal Church's General Convention resolved in 1982, and has repeatedly reaffirmed since, that the biblical tithe, giving ten percent of income, is the minimum standard of giving for Episcopalians, with the deputies and bishops present pledging to tithe or work toward it as their own standard and calling the wider church to do the same. Parish stewardship programs commonly frame a member's pledge as proportional giving, working a rising percentage toward that tithe rather than requiring it outright from the start, and no interview or standing requirement ties a member's status to whether they in fact reach it. (1)The Georgian Orthodox Church holds no documented percentage tithe or fixed personal giving quota for an ordinary member. Under Article 6, paragraph 4 of the 2002 Constitutional Agreement between the Georgian state and the Church, the Church's own financing is categorized in law as coming from several sources together, voluntary contributions, corporate income, investments, grants and donations, alongside separate direct state budget funding under the same agreement. No primary Church source or scholarly study naming a specific rate or duty for an ordinary member has been found across two research bands on this axis; the concordat's own category label for lay giving is voluntary rather than a codified individual obligation. (1)The Manual of The Mother Church sets a per capita tax, at least one dollar a year, payable by every member of The Mother Church to its Treasurer; a member's first contribution of the year to the church's General Fund is treated as satisfying it. This is a fixed due rather than a percentage of income, and it is a By-Law like any other in the Manual: the Manual's own general discipline track for a By-Law violation, admonishment, then probation, then, on a repeated offense, the member's name dropped from the roll, governs it as it governs any other By-Law, and the church's own present-day guidance confirms the practical consequence is that a member who does not pay can be dropped from The Mother Church's membership roster. (1)The Romanian Orthodox Church sets no tithe or fixed percentage on its members. Its own governing Statute, approved by the Holy Synod in 2007, Article 189, names parish operating and building costs as covered from "the voluntary contributions of the faithful" alongside the parish's own income-generating activities and state, local and institutional budget contributions (Article 191 names further state and Patriarchate subsidies available for pastoral, cultural and social work), and Article 190 states clergy salaries likewise run through a mix of the cult unit's own budget and state or local contributions rather than resting on member giving alone. The voluntary character is not merely informal: Article 187(6) explicitly forbids conditioning the officiating of a funeral rite on payment of any fee set by a priest or Parish Council, and the Church's own spokesperson has stated publicly that "in the Romanian Orthodox Church there is no concept of mandatory tax or contribution," some parishes' annual contributions being voluntary rather than imposed, with priests who impose them subject to church discipline. This is a codified voluntary character built into the Church's own Statute, distinct from the informal drift toward fee-like treby pricing already recorded for the Russian Orthodox Church on this axis. (1)The Russian Orthodox Church sets no tithe, membership due or fixed percentage on its members. Parish income instead runs through direct, uncosted donation ("the Cup"); the sale of candles and zapiski (prayer lists read during services), described as "the most commercial and almost the most significant part of income," reportedly up to 50 percent in many parishes; and treby, per-service fees for baptisms, funerals, blessings and similar private rites, "becoming a significant source of income" and, for some clergy, "more than 3-4 times" their base income. The Church's own hierarchy has recognized the tension this creates: the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia's own Report at the Jubilee Episcopal Council, 13-16 August 2000, states plainly that "it is necessary to work towards allowing parishioners' sacrifices to be deeply voluntary and not perceived as a 'tax' for 'ritual service.'" What exists is a customary, transactional pattern of support rather than a codified obligation on the individual member, with no fixed rate and no consequence tied to a member's standing for giving less. (1)The Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America's own Church Assembly (Sabor), its principal legislative body, adopted a revision to its Constitution in 2009 replacing a fixed dues system with a self-determined annual stewardship pledge as the financial condition of membership, "spiritual obligations for membership" left unchanged. Saint Steven's Serbian Orthodox Cathedral amended its own By-Laws to match at a Special Congregation Meeting on October 24, 2010, adopting the text: "A member in good standing is one whose stewardship pledge is fulfilled each year. Only members in good standing can vote at meetings. Should a member without sufficient cause refuse to fulfill his pledge each year, such a person shall cease to be a member in good standing and shall lose all rights and privileges thereof." No percentage or fixed dollar figure is set; each steward determines their own pledge. The same page softens the formal consequence in pastoral practice, stating that a member unable to meet a pledge for genuine hardship is asked to contact the parish Dean, "no one will be chasing or embarrassing you." (1)Tithing, giving a tenth of one's income, has biblical origins in Anglican teaching and functions today as a stated aspiration rather than a fixed requirement. The Church of England's General Synod "has for some time now encouraged individual Christians to review our giving annually and to give a proportion of our income," with "the initial target suggested by General Synod" set at "5% of post-tax income to and through the church and a similar amount to other charities," a split that together reconstructs the traditional tenth. Diocesan guidance built on this General Synod position states plainly that "how much you give is a matter for your personal and prayerful reflection," framing the historic tithe as an ideal to grow toward through annual review rather than a rate owed. No consequence attaches to giving less than the suggested target. (1)Tithing, ten percent of income, is taught as a formal doctrinal expectation across multiple major Pentecostal bodies, not merely a customary habit. The Assemblies of God's own governing Bylaws name it a recognized duty. The Foursquare Church's Declaration of Faith, one of its own twenty-two formal articles of belief, states as its own doctrine that "the method ordained of God to sustain His ministry and the spread of the gospel after His command is 'Tithing'" and that this is "generally accepted throughout all Foursquare churches," citing Malachi 3:10's command to "bring all the tithes into the storehouse." Neither body's own materials name a consequence for an ordinary member who gives less; the doctrine is affirmed at the level of formal belief rather than enforced against an individual's standing in the church. (1)Twelver Shia jurisprudence obliges a believer to pay khums, literally "one fifth," on annual surplus income remaining once ordinary living and business expenses are met. Property on which khums has become due may not be freely used until it is paid; classical rulings, restated today by maraji' such as Grand Ayatollah Sistani, hold that spending or losing such property without paying khums on it is itself a sin and does not extinguish the debt. The sum is divided into two equal shares: sahm al-sadat, given to poor, orphaned or stranded descendants of the Prophet through his grandfather Hashim, and sahm al-imam, which during the Imam's occultation is placed at the disposal of a qualified jurist, in practice today paid to or authorized by the believer's own marja'. This is distinct from, and paid in addition to, zakat, which Sunni and Shia Muslims alike are obliged to pay. (1)Standing of Holy OrdersAllHistoric Episcopate (1)Historic Episcopate Locally Adapted (1)Historic Episcopate Received Not Required (1)Ministry by Lawful Call (1)Status TodayAllAccess restricted by its custodians or by law (1)Dissolved; the community wound itself up (1)Living tradition, practised today (56)Swearing of OathsAllRefused. The tradition holds that the Christian's yes is to be yes, and gives an affirmation in place of a judicial oath. (1)Usury Position DetailAllRoman Catholic teaching bars taking a return from a loan contract by itself: Vix Pervenit states plainly that "any gain which exceeds the amount he gave is illicit and usurious." What the same encyclical does not bar is a return owed for a reason genuinely separate from the loan, an "extrinsic title" such as compensation for real risk of loss or for an opportunity the lender gave up to make the loan, reasons the text describes as "not at all intrinsic to the contract" itself. This distinction, not a simple ceiling on the interest rate, is what lets ordinary lending operate today without the charge counting as usury in the sense the Church has condemned since antiquity. (1)Wealth Figure As Of YearAll1997 (1)2007 (1)2008 (1)2009 (1)2010 (1)2014 (1)2016 (3)2018 (1)2019 (1)2022 (1)2023 (2)2024 (9)2025 (2)2026 (1)Welfare and Humanitarian Aid OperationsAllJehovah's Witnesses' own website states that, over a twelve month period ending in mid-2012, its relief work included dispatching 42 tons of nonperishable food, 20,000 bottles of water, 10 tons of clothing and 5 tons of cleaning supplies, along with medicine and other items, to areas of Brazil struck by floods, landslides and mudslides that killed hundreds of people. (1)The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' own 2025 Caring Report states that the Church spent 1.58 billion US dollars in total welfare, self-reliance and humanitarian expenditures during 2025, completing 3,514 humanitarian projects and providing assistance in 196 countries and territories. Church members volunteered 7.4 million hours of service at Church welfare and self-reliance facilities, in service missions, and in community service projects during the year. (1)Who May ReceiveAllLeft with the congregation. Practice ranges from a table open to any baptised believer to one kept for the congregation's own members. (1)The convention sets no rule. Each congregation decides whom it invites to the table. (2)BrowseCompareAfrican Methodist Episcopal ChurchTradition2 entriesAfrican Methodist Episcopal Zion ChurchTradition2 entriesAlawitesTradition1 entryAlevismTradition1 entryAlexandrian WiccaTradition1 entryAnabaptismTradition2 entriesAnglican CommunionTradition5 entriesAnglicanismTradition1 entryArmenian Apostolic ChurchTradition1 entryBaptistTradition3 entriesCalvinism (Reformed)Tradition2 entriesChristian Methodist Episcopal ChurchTradition1 entryChristian ScienceTradition1 entryChurch of CyprusTradition3 entriesChurch of GreeceTradition3 entriesChurch of IrelandTradition3 entriesChurch of SwedenTradition1 entryChurches of ChristTradition2 entriesCommunity of ChristTradition1 entryCoptic OrthodoxyTradition1 entryDisciples of ChristTradition1 entryDutch Reformed ChurchTradition5 entriesEastern OrthodoxyTradition2 entriesEcumenical Patriarchate of ConstantinopleTradition1 entryThe Episcopal ChurchTradition1 entryEritrean Orthodox Tewahedo ChurchTradition1 entryEvangelical Lutheran Church in AmericaTradition4 entriesFree Methodist ChurchTradition2 entriesGardnerian WiccaTradition1 entryGeorgian Orthodox ChurchTradition3 entriesGlobal Methodist ChurchTradition2 entriesGreek Orthodox ChurchTradition3 entriesIbadismTradition1 entryISKCON (Hare Krishna)Tradition1 entryIsmailismTradition1 entryJehovah's WitnessesTradition1 entryKharijitesTradition1 entryLatter-day Saints (Mormonism)Tradition1 entryLutheranismTradition1 entryMennonitesTradition5 entriesMethodismTradition3 entriesMoravian ChurchTradition1 entryNational Baptist Convention of AmericaTradition6 entriesOriental OrthodoxyTradition1 entryPentecostalismTradition1 entryPresbyterianismTradition3 entriesProgressive National Baptist ConventionTradition6 entriesProtestantismTradition1 entryQuakerism (Religious Society of Friends)Tradition1 entryRoman CatholicismTradition4 entriesRomanian Orthodox ChurchTradition3 entriesRussian Orthodox ChurchTradition1 entrySaint Thomas ChristiansTradition2 entriesSerbian Orthodox ChurchTradition3 entriesSeventh-day AdventismTradition2 entriesShakersTradition1 entryShia (Twelver)Tradition1 entryUkrainian Greek Catholic ChurchTradition1 entryUkrainian Orthodox ChurchTradition1 entryThe United Methodist ChurchTradition4 entriesZaidiyyahTradition1 entrySources1. 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